Ben Madilynn
A grandmother in Scotland ended up being tackled to the ground by her ball-obsessed dog after getting in the way during a game of fetch.
Dramatic footage captured on an Ring outdoor camera and subsequently shared with Newsweek captured the dramatic moment Debra Martin, 54, was sent flying.
Martin had entered her back garden to throw out some garbage. Unbeknownst to her, Teddy, her year-old golden retriever was coming toward her at speed to catch a ball thrown by her granddaughter Zoey, 8, who had been playing with the puppy at the top of the garden.
The resulting collision quite literally swept Martin off her feet. On the video, she can be heard unleashing a guttural sound as she lands on the stone patio.
The fact both her sliders and one sock fall off in the ensuing chaos only adds to the slapstick nature of it all. The reaction of Martin’s cat, Milo, 12, is equally hilarious with the senior feline opting to preserve one of his nine lives by jumping up on the nearby shed’s roof.
Thankfully, Martin, who lives in Kelty, confirmed that she escaped the incident, which happened back in June, relatively unscathed. “Because I went down so hard, everybody thought I must have hurt myself but, other than hurting my pride, I was absolutely fine!” she told Ring.
She went on: “I’d actually forgotten about the incident but suddenly remembered at a house party a few days later. I asked my son-in-law how far back I can go to find the footage and he said I should be able to retrieve all my videos. I went back through the footage by a few days and found it. Of course, everybody was in hysterics!”
Martin added that while Milo climbed back down from the shed soon after to be by her side, Teddy’s sole focus remained on the game he was playing. “His only interest was finding the ball. Not for me. Nothing. Zero. He likes his treats but he’s just obsessed with tennis balls! There’s nothing in the world he loves more than that ball!” she said.
Teddy is not the first dog to prioritize games of fetch above almost anything else. Though some debate still rages as to why dogs enjoy games of fetch so much, Debbie Jacobs, a certified dog trainer and author of the book A Guide To Living With & Training A Fearful Dog, has previously suggested it may be as simple as the fact that they like doing it.
Ring
“They don’t need to be rewarded for the behavior,” she told Huffington Post. “If you like playing football, you play football even if you don’t get paid to do it. It just feels good to do it.”
To Jacobs’ way of thinking, the same rings true of dogs. “If you have a dog who in their genetic mix happens to be strongly predisposed to chasing and grabbing something, and at some point introduce them to the game of fetch, you can end up with a dog who wants to do it a lot,” she said.
That theory would likely have been of scant consolation to Martin in the wake of her fall. Teddy may only be a puppy, but the average weight of a year-old golden retriever is 60-70 pounds—more than enough to make an impact while traveling at high speed.
Thankfully, all has been forgiven as far as Martin is concerned. “He’s a big dog so he just forgets his own size sometimes,” she said. “But I love everything about him, even when he’s knocking me off my feet!”
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