tennis balls & pets

[nohorn]

I have been told that the insides of tennis balls are poisonous to pets. Has anyone ever heard this before?

[MarkRae]

Is there anything inside tennis balls...?

[madmaggot]

They can be ripped apart then big bits swallowed which causes a blockage of the gut needing emergency surgery to clear it. If your dog is one that rips stuff apart best not to give it tennis balls.

[nohorn]

Once I saw the insides of a tennis ball, is has slimy lining, probably hydrocarbon based. Sometimes dogs will chew and pick them apart.

[mike11111]

i don't know about tennis balls, but a popular punishment in my school meted out to errant pupils by prefects in the early 60s was "Write two sides of foolscap on the contents of the inside of a table tennis ball"

[lankeela]

No modern tennis balls are not toxic, however I would never allow a large dog like my GSD to play with one, as they can bounce and get stuck in the back of their throat, choking them before you can get them out.

[islasmum]

I thought that it was golf balls that had rubber inside that were fairly lethal to dogs, not to mention the size of them - my labs had ripped many a tennis ball open (we used to have a couple of children next door, and you can usually expect to see a ball of some description in our garden pretty often - and I did throw them back over the fence, if the dogs hadn't got to it first!)

[nohorn]

Hi thanks everyone for replying.
nohorn