My ferret loves to play fetch. I throw a tennis ball down the hall or down the stairs, and she runs after it, picks it up, and brings it back to me, expecting me to throw it again. I always get tired of this long before she does. I have heard that many dogs are the same way.
I got to wondering today if the process could be automated, sort of like the pitching/serving machines used in baseball and tennis, only more pet-friendly. I’m envisaging a contraption which takes a tennis ball from a basket and launches it in a direction and at a speed predetermined by the owner. The pet then fetches the ball and puts it back in the basket, whence it drops back into the machine and gets launched again. If the pet is smart enough to bring a ball back to an owner, then surely it won’t take long to learn how to bring it back to a basket.
I don’t think such a machine would be incredibly complicated. No robot arm is needed to grab the ball; just cut a hole in the bottom of a curved basket and let gravity do the work. The machine could be powered by electricity, or perhaps entirely pneumatically (i.e., the falling ball trips a switch which releases a puff of compressed air).
Needless to say, such a machine would be a boon to ferret and dog (and maybe even some cat) owners who love to play fetch with their animals but not for two hours straight. The only question is, has it been invented yet? And if so, where can I buy one?