While your dog may enjoy playing fetch, they might not understand the risk they are being put at. 

On The Hard Shoulder, Peter Weatherburn - or ‘Pete the Vet’ - suggested throwing something other than a tennis ball for them. 

“We're just taking the risk away from dogs,” he argued. 

“Nothing wrong with chasing an occasional tennis ball - some dogs do it so repetitively.

“It's like you get a kind of repetitive stress injury on their teeth because it's repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. 

“And the point is that there are much, much better ways of doing it.” 

Mr Weatherburn added that that over a long period of time a tennis balls acts “like sandpaper” in their mouth. 

“It wears down the protective enamel of the teeth, exposing the pulp cavity,” he explained. 

“That then causes them real pain - nobody wants that.” 

Even more seriously, Mr Weatherburn said a dog could swallow a ball and choke to death. 

“If you give a big dog a tennis ball, if the ball is big enough that it can fit past the front premolars when the mouth is fully open, then there's a really serious risk that it actually can go and inhale it,” he said. 

“Then it's stuck at the back of the mouth and you can't get it out and the dog will die on the spot.

“These are things that vets really, really see.” 

Main image: A dog with a tennis ball. Picture by: Alamy.com.