West Paw Toppl: A Plain Guide for Dog-and-Baby Homes

The West Paw Toppl is a treat-dispensing enrichment toy shaped like an open, wide-mouth bowl with soft rounded prongs inside that hold food until the dog noses it loose. You stuff it, freeze it, and hand it over as a long solo licking project — it is a slow-food and puzzle toy, the kind of thing you reach for when you need the dog occupied and settled rather than a ball to throw. It is made in one piece from West Paw’s Zogoflex material in Bozeman, Montana.

We haven’t tested this ourselves — this guide is built from the spec sheet and the patterns across thousands of owner reviews. Where owners and the spec sheet disagree, we say so.

The wide mouth is the whole point

If you have ever tried to dig peanut butter out of the bottom of a Kong with a bottle brush, the Toppl is the answer to that specific misery. It is a shallow, open bowl rather than a deep cavity, so owners and trainers report you can layer fillings by hand without a piping bag, and reviewers say it comes clean in nearly any dishwasher. West Paw lists it as top-rack dishwasher safe and freezer safe, and it floats. The rounded interior teeth hold treats in place, and a small hole in the side lets loose kibble tumble out as the dog rolls it, so the same toy works as a lick project, a slow feeder for a gulper, or a wobble scatter dish depending on how you load it.

The mechanism that actually matters is the freeze. Unfrozen, owners and third-party reviewers say a Toppl is gone in 5–10 minutes — the dog just inhales the soft filling. Frozen, the same load stretches to roughly 20–30 minutes. One owner’s dogs stayed busy a full 20 minutes on a frozen turkey blend. That is the difference between a snack and an activity, and it is why experienced owners load it and freeze it the night before rather than filling it on the spot.

Why a dog-and-baby home is the use case

Here is the concrete moment. It is the 2 p.m. feed, you have the baby on one arm and a bottle in the other hand, and the dog has decided this is the most interesting thing that has happened all day and would like to help. A Toppl you froze last night comes out of the freezer, goes down on the dog’s mat, and buys you the 20–30 minutes of quiet licking the feed actually takes. Because it is a long, low-clatter activity — no squeaker, no hard ball skittering across the tile — it works during a nap or a bath too, where a noisy toy would defeat the purpose. If you want more ideas for the settle-the-dog-during-a-feed problem, we cover it in keeping a dog busy while you feed the baby.

Two things a baby house has to plan around. First, an open bowl of frozen filling drips and smears as it thaws, so owners set it on a wipeable, washable mat and not on carpet — the payoff is that the whole toy is top-rack dishwasher safe, so cleanup is the toy going in with the bottle parts, not a scrubbing session. Second is the pick-up rule. A Toppl is soft-firm rubber, not indestructible, and owners report a bored dog can get purchase on the wide lip and start chewing the empty toy. Around a crawler that cuts two ways: you do not want loose chunks on the floor, and you do not want a slobbery lick toy sitting at baby’s eye level once the food is gone.

What owners consistently like

The clean-up is the recurring rave. Compared to a Kong, owners describe the wide mouth as the reason they actually keep using it — a puzzle toy you dread washing is a puzzle toy that lives in a drawer. The frozen engagement time is the second: reviewers repeat the 20–30-minute frozen figure and treat it as the main reason to own one over a plain slow bowl. Durability gets steady praise for the right dog — a mydoglikes reviewer said after “hours of heavy use, ours don’t have a scratch on them,” and West Paw highlights strong reviews across its toy range. Owners like the versatility (peanut butter and yogurt, kibble soaked in bone broth, gently cooked food), and eco-minded buyers specifically call out that it is made in the USA and recyclable through West Paw’s take-back program. If a Toppl clicks for your dog, a flat lick mat scratches the same itch on a table or crate wall, and there are more loadable ideas in our Kong stuffing guide.

Things to know before you buy

The big one, attributed to owners and to West Paw itself: this is not a power-chewer toy. Owners report determined chewers gouging chunks or ripping a Toppl in half — in one case a 15-month lab mix chewed pieces off during a supervised second use. If a Toppl does get damaged, West Paw’s Love It Guarantee covers a one-time replacement or refund. The workaround is to be honest about your dog. Use the Toppl as a licking and enrichment toy under supervision, and if your dog is a committed destroyer, West Paw labels the Toppl a moderate-chewer toy and points hard chewers to its more solid, one-piece Zogoflex chews like the Jive, Tux, or Hurley instead. It carries no VOHC dental seal, and it should not — it is an enrichment toy, not a dental chew, so it makes no dental claim.

The second, from owners: treats can fall out too fast, especially unfrozen or through the side hole. The workaround owners use is to pack the filling tightly, plug the wide opening with a banana slice, frozen coconut oil, or a square of Press’n’Seal, and freeze it in one step so it dispenses slowly instead of dumping. The third, also owner-reported, is the empty-toy chewing on the wide lip — the fix is simply to take it away as soon as the food is gone rather than leaving it out as a chew. On price, the Large typically runs around $18–22; the Small is cheaper and the XL costs more, and the second Toppl you need to stack for harder difficulty is sold separately, so budget for that if you want the interlocking mode.

Put plainly

For a moderate-chewing dog and a busy household, the Toppl earns its keep as the freeze-ahead lick toy that is genuinely easy to fill and clean — that is the honest fit. It is not a chew toy and not a power-chewer toy, so if your dog dismantles rubber for sport, this is the wrong pick and West Paw’s more solid, one-piece Zogoflex chews like the Jive, Tux, or Hurley are the right aisle. Freeze it the night before, set it on a wipeable mat away from the baby, and lift it the moment it is licked clean. For a fuller lineup of solo enrichment, see our dog puzzle toys and snuffle mat guides.