You can teach an old dog new tricks!
The age-old question was answered at the Brazil Open in late February when four shelter dogs, rescued from the slums and abandoned lots of Sao Paulo, were trained as ball boys (ball dogs) for an in-tournament exhibition match.
After a month’s training, the dogs – Frida, Mel, Isabelle, and Costela – did the classic ball boy retrieval job: fetching tennis balls that went into the net or out of bounds and dutifully bringing them back to the servers.
The dogs gained as much attention during the match than the players: Spain’s Roberto Carballes Baena and Portugal’s Gastao Elias sometimes deliberately overlooked balls and encouraged the audience to cheer the canines at work.
The ‘ball dog’ initiative was the brainchild of a local shelter hoping to raise awareness of the plight of these animals and drive animal adoption in Brazil.
The animal care cause stunt certainly generated plenty of attention via local, national and international news coverage and a supporting campaign led by a YouTube video of the animals in action
and parallel social media campaign.
Dogs as ball boys? What's going on at @BrasilOpenTenis?! Read & Watch: https://t.co/T5E0zvfj6h #ATP #tennis pic.twitter.com/aPB7TjPajD
— ATP World Tour (@ATPWorldTour) February 26, 2016
‘The idea is to show people that a well-fed and well-treated animal can be very happy. We have more than 1,000 dogs in our care,’ explains initiative organiser Marli Scaramella.
‘We want to show that abandoned dogs can be adopted and trained.’
‘These are dogs that were mistreated,’ adds their coach Andrea Beckert of the Association of Animal Wellbeing.
‘We want to show that abandoned dogs can be adopted and trained. After all, it’s not easy to get a dog to only pick up the lost balls, and then to give them up!’
Comment
A cracking animal welfare cause campaign generating on-court entertainment and driving major media coverage.
It just goes to show that you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks!
Links
Brazil Open Website:
Brazil Open Twitter
https://twitter.com/BrasilOpenTenis
Brazil Open Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/BrasilOpenTenis
Brazil Open Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/brasilopen/
Brazil Open Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brasilopen/
Association of Animal Wellbeing:
