Kurgo Mud Dog Travel Shower

A rubber shower head for standard thread bottles, meant for dogs but works great for dog owners too!

Backpacking in hot weather is great if your day ends at a lake or river deep enough for a rinse-off before bedtime, otherwise you may be in for a sticky, grimy night. And in cooler weather it can be nice to get clean as well, but full immersion or a cold splash bath may not be entirely pleasant.

This little doggie shower works just as well for humans, and offers a way to wash up in less than ideal circumstances. Our dear departed Ralphie would have hated it, only because he didn't like being washed in any way, even though he loved swimming. But I think it's great!

There's not much to it, just a molded rubber spray head that you can screw on to a one or two liter soda bottle or anything else with the same thread type. Since 2L soda bottles don't fit in a backpack very well, I did some research and found that, while Platypus soft water bottles don't use the standard thread, the less-expensive Japanese-made Evernew ones do (the buzz on the backpacking sites is that those are the ones you want to use with Sawyer squeeze and gravity filter systems). So I ordered me a couple of those, left a full one out in the sun on the patio table on a hot day in Tucson, and a few hours later I was ready for a hot shower!

The seal seems to be quite good—I didn't notice any drip or leaks. Using the two liters somewhat conservatively, I was able to do a quick shampoo and body wash followed by a full rinse. There is no valve, but a gusseted soft bottle can easily be set on the ground while soaping up. Where solar warming isn't available, water can be warmed by other means. I foresee leaving a bottle by the wood stove in the huts in Norway and completing the mission outside or in the washroom that some huts have.

The shower head weighs a very reasonable 36g (1.25 oz), and a 2L Evernew weighs 41g (1.44 oz), so the whole system weighs well under 100g or 3 oz. That is considerably less than any of the diverse solar showers on offer at various outdoor outlets, and the Kurgo-Evernew combo is less expensive as well, albeit lower in volume.