A Tool Too Far: The Dog-Ball-Spoon

[Andy Kev.]

I reckon I've seen it all now. This morning I was sitting outside a bakery cum cafe in a place called Mannheim when a bloke walked by with his dog which had a tennis ball in its mouth. They reached a tree which the dog decided needed serious inspection and not being capable of multi-tasking, the dog dropped its ball to do same.

Then the bloke produced the oddest thing I've ever seen: a roughly 18 inch long, blue object, possibly made of some sort of rubbery plastic which had a sort of semi-circular cupped and toothed receptacle at the end. With this he picked up the ball and used it to chuck the ball once the arboreal examination was over.

Now when I were a lad it was accepted that when you took the dog for a walk its saliva would get on the ball and no harm done. What is the world coming to when folk can't or won't cope with that? I presume it was invented by the kind of person who calls the bogs a rest room. :mrgreen:

 

[Trainee neophyte]

It's not to keep your hands clean, it's to throw the ball a

very

long



way



to exercise the dog, not your arm.

 

[Andy Kev.]

But the bloke used it to whang the ball down onto the pavement about six feet in front of himself!

I still think it's dead girly.

 

[sunnybob]

if the alternative would be to get covered in dog spit, I'd consider most "girly" accessories.

 

[thetyreman]

for a while now I've thought about making a wooden version, mostly for fun, when you're on a field or massive space they are handy.

 

[transatlantic]

How have you never seen one of these?

I suppose you're one of those 'girly' types who doesn't own a dog. :lol:

I'm going to blow your mind with this, but .... ever heard of a spork?

 

[Garno]

.... ever heard of a spork?

I know what Pork is but I'm stumped at thinking what the "S" means at the beginning

 

[Trainee neophyte]

This is a pretty gruesome collection: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=ball+throw ... nb_sb_noss

Canine entertainment systems. An economist might call it"malinvestment". :shock:

 

[doctor Bob]

Owning setters you get very used to dog slobber, eye boggies still get me a bit............

 

[Suffolkboy]

eye bogies? That's nothing! Mine likes to eat grass. Extracting that when it gets to the other end is a bit minging

 

[doctor Bob]

eye bogies? That's nothing! Mine likes to eat grass. Extracting that when it gets to the other end is a bit minging

Ohhh yes that's a good un, they like that a lot!!!!

 

[MikeG.]

These things are employed by cricket coaches to hurl the ball to batsmen in the nets. It's the only way they can approach the speed of a fast bowler without actually, you know, being a fast bowler........and it's much more realistic than a bowling machine.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

eye bogies? That's nothing! Mine likes to eat grass. Extracting that when it gets to the other end is a bit minging

Ohhh yes that's a good un, they like that a lot!!!!

My boxer used to eat things from Tesco carrier bags .............. including the bags. It took a few minutes to tease them through.

 

[Bm101]

Damn modern inventions eh!?! Bahhh!

The word you are looking for is atlatl a South American term, or woomera an Austrailian Aboriginal name , or ankule (The Greeks,) or probably a million other names since prehistory. They have been around since people all over the world used spears. Still used in places.
They act like a third section to your throwing arm. Like a mini trebuchet in fact.
Here's a mind blowing fact.
Using one can let a skilled user throw a spear at speeds of '93mph' and to distances of 'nearly 260m.'
260 metres! :shock:
Yes. I am lifting this straight off of Wiki. Obviously.
It's a fascinating read actually and it even mentions the modern ball thrower for Dogs. Capital D when we talk about Dogs please.
It's nowt to do with laziness or slobber etc. It means you do a casual overhand throw with the ball that would go 30 m but with this it goes ridiculously far. Sometimes to other countries. Point is that the dog runs more, you walk less. It's an aid to efficiency. It always was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower
Well worth 5 minutes of your time having a read. It's funny, we all seem to think that people of the same species born before us were a bit dim on the basis that they were born slightly earlier. Imagine no work, no tv, no education. Nowt except survival skills. Every mofo is a real life survivalist otherwise they are already dead.The core knowledge of plants and animals must have been encyclopedic to a point we can't imagine now. Make a wrong choice, run the wrong way, eat the wrong plant. Horrible painful death right there. That's an extremely focused gameplan yes? That's the entirety of human history up till about well : The Relatively Recent. What do we think of as civilised society? In the west it starts with the Greeks. Generally. There's the Romans, Alexander, The Hun, Vikings, etc etc etc.
The Egyptians were old school. These dudes were around for 30 feckin centuries before Alexander ended them for good.
3000 years where nearly nothing changed. Literally 3000 years of people doing the same stuff.
yesterday I was trying to explain to my 9 year old lad, and he's pretty bright, that my grandfather cut up whales and sh*t outside and maybe just had the electric to work some magic lights in the house sometimes. There was no heating and nobody moved far from where they lived unless there was a war. If you wanted a bath you heated the water on the fire. He looks at me in amazement over his Nintendo Switch... What do I do? Hold him back?
I never lived like this as a kid but my old man still did. Three lifetimes and life is unrecognizable.
Anyway. As long as the Dog gets his tennis ball. :wink:

Bleedin' new stuff. 8)
Chris.

 

[Andy Kev.]

MikeG: That's clearly a non-girly use of the things of which one can only approve.

Bm101: I agree on the possible historical antecedents of the device. It seems to turn on ballistics at its most essential.

However, it seems to me that to use it for chucking your dog's ball is part of the modern trend towards sterility and avoidance of contact with reality.

Mind you, I don't want to get all serious about this. I suppose the trick with modernity is to have enough knowledge of life and indeed history to be able to say, "That's a load of b****cks and I'm having nowt to do wi' it".

 

[adidat]

eye bogies? That's nothing! Mine likes to eat grass. Extracting that when it gets to the other end is a bit minging

i am very familiar with an @rse bauble

adidat

 

[rafezetter]

NVM

 

[Aquachiefofficer]

I have one of these ball throwing sticks. Boxers can't be pursuaded to act like retrievers. I take her to the park and hurl the ball into low earth orbit. She watches with great interest. I say "fetch". She gives me a look that says " you bleeding threw it, you go fetch it!
Paul

 

[rafezetter]

Bm101: I agree on the possible historical antecedents of the device. It seems to turn on ballistics at its most essential.

However, it seems to me that to use it for chucking your dog's ball is part of the modern trend towards sterility and avoidance of contact with reality.

Nothing "possible" about it - what Bm101 is fact and a there's clear line of correlation between the two, the only thing modern tech has added is the use of a material that can add even more energy to the throw by storing then releasing that extra energy during the throw.

What about older people too - lots of reasons why using this makes sense.

As far as "sterility" - well, I'm not keen on children going blind or other health issues thanks.

https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6946/5