Taking care of Duke this weekend and taking him out on our course, Temple. Duke is currently our favourite golfing dog partly because he has picked up the trick of finding balls in the “ruff” so well. I should elaborate that there are essentially 3 types of ball-finding on the golf course:
UNWELCOME – Unwelcome fetching is when a dog finds and takes a ball during play (the “take” part being the problem). This gets reported periodically, But not to fret. Rules of golf mean that no material harm is done to your position as explained by the “Rules Guy” blog (I watched a dog pick up my ball. What now? Rules Guy):
- “The dog is an outside influence, and when an outside influence moves your ball at rest you are required, per Rule 9.6, to replace it. Had its owner been unable to retrieve the ball from his mischievous pet, you would have been able to replace a new one; as it happened, you were allowed to clean the ball before replacing it, should slobber have been an issue.”
A recent example was “A dog [who] ran off with Paul Casey’s ball in his mouth on the 12th green during the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship…A European Tour rules official inspected both and Casey was allowed to play his original ball.”.
LOST AND FOUND – The internet has a number of stories of dogs who are particularly adept at finding lost balls in rough and out of bounds, etc. One even has their very own blog – “Tilly the Golf Ball Retriever Dog”. Collie Jess is a particular stand-out – “Adorable dog saves her owner a FORTUNE by fetching 51,000 used golf balls” (any dog so trained on our course could find at least that many of just the balls I have lost!).
IN THE RUFF – The best ball “fetching” is not “fetching” at all actually, but “finding”. We taught our Grace to find balls in the ruff by scent (she would ignore other people’s balls she came across and would only find the balls with our scent on them) and point to them. Our friend’s Vizsla Luke is coming along very nicely in his ball finding skills after a successful outing yesterday.
Actually, Fireball Whisky came with come cinnamon scented golf balls to introduce this ball finding at a special event hosted by Bensenvilles White Pines Golf Club Dog caddies coming to Chicagoland golf course:
- “[They] let a pack of Golden Retrievers loose on the course as part of a one-day event. The friendly doggos will serve as caddies of sorts, sniffing out cinnamon-scented golf balls that get lost in the ‘ruff.’ On game day, participants will get a Fireball cinnamon-scented golf ball to use at the designated hole. If the shot goes sideways, the FireBall Retrievers will hunt it down.”
But the ultimate achievement in this space has to be the Labrador Murphy who has perfected the skills of finding balls IN THE LAKE! (“Dog is the ultimate caddie, retrieves ball thrown off pier”
- “Murphy is an eight-year-old black Labrador and was on vacation with his owner at Cradle Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. The owner decided to throw a golf ball off the pier on the lake and into four-foot-deep water. Murphy hops into the water (probably a little chilly) and swims around briefly before diving underwater to retrieve the ball.”
