Doggy drinking fountain for on-the-go - first-ever water drinking pouch for dogs

The vision behind WetBone, world’s first-ever water in a flexible plastic pouch for dogs on-the-go, is based upon the same mobility in drinks for dogs that consumers enjoy – portability, lightweight, resealability, ready-to-use and easy-to-drink. The concept is the brainchild of Wetbone cofounders and product developers Sue Tyska and Tony Tropea.
“Dogs drink with their tongue and we wanted to offer a bowl to them that wasn’t too deep or too shallow. We went with a medium size so that the concept would work with dogs of all sizes,” Tyska says.

The 16-oz (475 ml) water bag, shaped as a dog bone, contains two compartments: one reservoir for purified, vitamin enriched water and a “drinking bowl”. The pouch is a three-layer polyester/foil/linear oriented LDPE*) laminate, manufactured by Ampac Flexibles, a business unit of Ampac Packaging LLC.
Wetbone’s patent-pending water bowl relies on an additional 4 mil (0,01 mm) piece of polyethylene (an upside-down gusset), the middle section of which is heat-sealed to opposing inner walls of the flexible pouch (close to the top) to create a hammock-like drinking bowl. Four voids in the heat seal (two on each side) create the small 9mm channels enabling the water to be squeezed from the lower compartment into bowl section.

The pooch owner simply removes the tear strip at the top of the “bone” and after opening the press-to-close zipper, squeezes with one hand the bottom of the pouch, while the other hand is cupped around the top section forming a bowl. The squeezing action forces a small amount of water to enter the channels into the top bowl area. The owner can then offer the pouch to the pet for drinking.
The channels also allow the water to trickle back down into the bottom reservoir if the dog elects not to lap up all of the liquid in the top bowl. With the press-to-close zipper the pouch can be hermetically resealed and transported for later use.
The material composition of the pouch had to be strong enough to function as a stand-up pouch or better still a stand-up drinking bowl and survive drop tests, while the material and manufacturing costs were of crucial importance. To avoid too large a flow of water from the reservoir to the drinking bowl tinny channels had to be created in the dividing seal between reservoir and bowl to allow for a controlled migration of the water when squeezed.

“The most challenging part was the flow rate. We didn’t want a ton of water in the bowl when the consumer first opened the pouch. We needed to find a way to properly move the water from the reservoir into the bowl and do it in a way that would give us a pouch that could be commercially manufactured in a cost-effective way,” Sue Tyska explains.

The real “magic” was modifying the automatic heat sealer to create appropriately-sized gaps in the seal so that the channels were formed. “You need to create a channel system which allows water to migrate into the upper bowl-not too slow and not too fast. We were shooting for a filling speed of 5 to 7 seconds when steady pressure is applied to the bottom reservoir,” Steve Herlehy, account representative of Ampac, says.
Ampac engineers had to modify the sealing jaws to make sure that exactly the right amount of heat was present so that the channels didn’t inadvertently seal shut as a result of radiant heat migrating over from the contact points.

The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association estimates that there are some 74 million dogs in the USA, with a budget of 42 billion dollar in 2007. As 70% of the pet owners travel with their dogs dehydration of the animal on-the-go is of imminence importance.

Currently the pre-formed pouches are filled on a semi-automatic machine, but PPi Technologies Global is, in collaboration with Ampac developing a fully automatic filling and sealing system for this complex stand-up pouch construction. The stand-up bowls have a graphical design from Tropea and are printed by Ampac in five colours rotogravure.

*) LDPE = Low density (0.92-0.934) polyethylene. Used mainly for heatsealability and bulk in packaging.