Jacob was my first Cinnamon Trust love. He was a black Labrador ex-guide dog with impeccable manners and a tendency to over-eat a denti-stick or two. His obesity was the reason I was asked to help take him out for walks as his owner suffered from a debilitating condition and could no longer take him. He loved to chew tennis balls but tennis balls are not recommended.
On one of our usual walks Jacob picked up something green, slimy and strangely shaped. Worried that he would eat it or choke on it I scrambled to remove it and he immediately went into play mode and dropped it to the floor with an expectant look on his face.
I saw it was a chewed up ball and gave it a little kick much to Jacob’s delight. I had never seen him play before and there were no toys in the house for him. He then picked it up and kept it in his mouth most of the time for the rest of our walk with a happy demeanour.
In just a few minutes I had learned that he loves to play with a ball, puncture it and then carry it around when we walk. No matter how many new balls I gave to him to play with… his teeth went straight through them and the balls were no more.
So I wouldn’t actually recommend using tennis balls as toys for dogs as they can easily get swallowed and cause terrible injury or even death. The fact that they go slimy with saliva makes them almost impossible to grip if at the back of the throat. The tennis ball can also split apart in the back of the throat, blocking the dog’s airway. The tennis ball can also break down into pieces as the dog chews, which increases the risk of the dog ingesting those pieces. This is why tennis balls are not recommended.
Even though Jacob was a very greedy dog, thankfully he never ate the ball. He would simply puncture it and carry it around. A better choice for a Labrador would have been a training dummy.
With some cooperation from his loving owner about watching his diet, some exercise and more play, Jacob went from a death-knell 49kg to a healthy 35kg over 2 years and lived to be a ripe old age of 15 years.
