Kurgo Zippy Bowl Review: A Collapsible Bowl in the Hiking Pack

The first summer I hiked with Moss I watered him out of my own hand. He is a 46 pound Australian shepherd mix and he laps fast, so maybe half of what I poured made it into his mouth. The rest ran down my wrist or landed on the trail. When you are carrying every ounce of water on your own back, that is a foolish way to spend it.

Three years ago I bought a Kurgo Zippy Bowl and clipped it to the outside of my pack, and it has been on every hike since. Not because it is clever, and not because it solved anything complicated. It does one small job correctly and then disappears for the rest of the day. From me, that is about the highest praise a piece of trail gear can get. I bought it myself with my own money, the same as everything else in my pack.

How I've Used It

I live in Bend, Oregon, and I hike most Saturdays from April through October on Cascade trails, day hikes of four to nine miles. Moss is six now, about 21 inches at the shoulder and 28 inches around the chest, and he has been on those trails with me for four years. Each summer we do a handful of one and two night trips, and in winter we snowshoe. The bowl has been on all of it. It clips by its carabiner to the outside of my own pack, and on the days Moss wears his pack instead of his harness it hangs off the side of his. I have never once had to dig for it at the bottom of a bag.

The routine at every stop is the same. Unclip it, unzip it, open it out, set it down, pour about a third of the way full. Moss drinks. I zip it back down and clip it on again. On a nine mile day we do that four or five times. I fill it a third of the way because a full bowl is a bowl I either have to pour out on the ground or carry back up the trail, and on a dry August trail pouring water into the dust feels like a waste of the work it took to haul it there.

The part I did not expect is that Moss drank from it the first time I set it down, with no coaxing and no treats. That is not a training achievement on my part. It is a bowl that looks and smells like a bowl. Some of the gear I have bought for him took a few sessions in the yard before he would relax about it. This took nothing, which is worth something on a cold morning when you are both ready to walk.

There is a stretch on one of my usual loops, about six and a half miles in, where the trail opens onto a flat shelf of rock with a view south. It has become our stop out of habit rather than planning. I unclip the bowl, set it on the flattest part of the rock, pour, and Moss drinks while I eat half a sandwich. On a nine mile day that is stop four of five. I know the routine well enough now that the whole thing takes under a minute, which is the entire point of gear like this. It asks for no attention and then it goes back on the pack.

What the Zipper Actually Does

The whole design of the Kurgo Zippy Bowl is a fabric bowl with a zipper running around the rim. Zipped shut, it folds down flat, roughly seven inches by three and a third, thin enough to push into a jacket pocket if I want to leave the pack behind for a short side trip. Unzipped, it opens into a bowl about six and a half inches across and four and eight tenths inches tall, and it holds 48 fluid ounces. The listing also gives 1.4 liters, which is the same number in different clothes.

That flat state is the reason it lives on the outside of my pack instead of inside it. A rigid bowl takes the same space full as empty, and I have never had that space to spare on an overnight. This one takes up almost nothing when it is empty, which means I never have to choose between bringing the bowl and bringing something else I need.

The zipper does a second job I did not think about until I had used it for a season. Zipped shut, the bowl stays folded and there is nothing loose to catch on brush or snag on the inside of a pack. I have pulled it out of a bag a hundred times and never had it come open on its own. It weighs 1.76 ounces, which I confirmed once on the kitchen scale mostly because the scale was already out. Nothing about that number is a burden.

One more thing about the zipper. It is a single pull that runs the whole rim, and the tab is big enough to work with cold fingers or a thin liner glove. I have opened it on a snowshoe day in February with liners on and did not fumble it once. That sounds like a small detail until you have stood in the cold trying to pinch a tiny tab with numb hands while your dog waits and your poles are leaning against a tree.

Weight, Pack Space, and the Clipped-On Habit

On a day hike the weight is not the argument. On an overnight it starts to matter a little, and 1.76 ounces is not a number I have ever had to think about. What I think about is where things are. The carabiner is the part I would miss most if it were gone. It is small, it is not climbing rated, and I would not hang anything important from it, but it does exactly the job I need: it keeps the bowl on the outside of a pack where I can reach it without stopping and shrugging anything off my shoulders.

Because the bowl moves between my pack and Moss's pack depending on the day, the carabiner matters more than I expected it to. On harness days it hangs off the webbing on my own shoulder strap. On pack days it goes on the side of his Ruffwear day pack, and I check that it is not swinging where it will bounce against his flank. Moving it takes a second and I have never had it come loose on the trail.

The Kurgo bowl on the outside of a pack gets rained on, dusted, and scraped against rock. Mine has been. Nothing has torn. The fabric has softened up over three seasons and the whole thing packs a little flatter than it did the first spring, which is what I would expect from any well made cloth item and what I got here.

It has also been sat on in the back seat of the Outback more than once, because Moss rides in the back and the pack goes in with him. It is a bowl. It is supposed to get used. The one thing I have been careful about is not leaving it balled up wet in the car, because wet fabric in a closed vehicle for a week is how gear starts to smell.

Three years, most Saturdays from April through October, plus the overnights and the snowshoe days, and nothing on this bowl has torn.

Where It Falls Short on the Trail

The zipper collects grit. That is the honest weak spot and it is not a small one. Trail dust works into the teeth, and once it is in there the zipper runs rough. Mine has never failed, but it has gotten stiff enough that I noticed it. I rinse the bowl at home after most hikes and work the zipper open and shut a few times under the tap, then leave it open to dry. I do not think it would still be working after three years if I had left it dirty in the back of the car between trips.

The second thing is that the bowl is floppy until it is unzipped and opened out. Folded, it is a limp piece of fabric with a zipper on the edge, and if you set it down half open it will collapse and spill. You have to open it fully and put it on something flat. On a sloping granite slab I have to pick my spot. That is not really a defect, it is what a fabric bowl is, but it is worth knowing before you buy one and try to balance it on a rock while your dog waits.

Third, and this is minor. The bowl holds 48 ounces, and if you are the kind of person who fills a bowl to the top and lets the dog take what he wants, you will be pouring a fair amount back out or carrying it. I fill it a third of the way at each stop instead, which is why we get four or five stops out of a day. That is my habit, not a flaw in the bowl, but it is the reason I never fill it.

After a dusty August hike the teeth of the zipper look grey and the pull runs with a rasp. My fix is unglamorous. I hold the bowl under the kitchen tap, work the zipper back and forth maybe a dozen times, shake it out, and hang it open over the dish rack overnight. Twice a season I use a soft brush on the teeth if the grit has really set in. That is the entire maintenance schedule for this thing, and it works out to about two minutes a week during hiking season.

What I Compared It To

Before this bowl I used my hand, or a plastic bag held by the corners, which is a worse version of the same idea. I have never owned a dog water bottle with a built in trough. I have looked at them on the shelf and I have watched other hikers use them, and I have thought through the tradeoff more than once on a long climb.

The bottle with a trough is a tidy piece of gear. One unit, no pouring, and whatever the dog does not drink goes back into the bottle instead of onto the ground. That last point is the real argument for it and I will not pretend otherwise. What has stopped me is the cleaning. A bowl gets rinsed and dried in about a minute. A bottle with a trough has a trough, a valve, and a bottle, and I know myself well enough to know how that ends after a muddy Saturday in October.

If I were redesigning the Kurgo bowl I would put a slightly wider lip on the rim so it holds its shape a little better when it is only partly open. That is the only change I can come up with after three years, and it is a small one. The listing mentions a lifetime warranty for purchases from an authorized seller. I have never had to use it, so I cannot tell you how that process actually goes.

Who This Is For

This suits anyone who already carries water for a dog on a hike, especially if you are carrying it yourself. If you are doing four to nine mile days, if you stop two or three times to water your dog, and if your pack is already full, a bowl that folds flat and clips to the outside is the version of this gear that gets out of your way. It also suits people who take the dog on overnight trips, because that is where the flat state earns its keep.

It suits a big dog too. Moss is 46 pounds and the bowl at 48 ounces is more than he needs at any single stop, which is why I only fill it partway. If you have a smaller dog, you will simply carry more water back down than I do. The bowl does not care either way.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want a bowl that stands up on its own on uneven ground, because this one will not until you open it all the way. Skip it if you know you will not rinse your gear, because a gritty zipper on a fabric bowl is a slow decline rather than a sudden failure. And skip it if you have already settled into a bottle with a trough that works for you and you do not mind cleaning it. That is a real solution to the same problem, and I would not talk you out of it. The bowl wins for me on cleaning and on pack space. It does not win on everything.