I started seeing these things around a few months ago (image from Amazon):
Every time I saw it, though, the person was just walking and carrying it, with their dog nearby. Which made me take the Chuckit! very much not seriously, because it’s hard to take something seriously when a person is carrying it looking very serious but is clearly just going to play with their dog. The people look like tennis players entering the court, ready for the day’s match, and the day’s match is against a hyperactive one-year-old lab who’s zooming back and forth over the same four feet in unmitigated excitement at the sight of their human’s extended plastic arm.
Commentator: The real deciding factor today will be whether Jerry can successfully use the whole dog park and keep Daisy guessing. In their last outing, Daisy had him read perfectly. He needs to vary his forehands and backhands and throw more feints in there if he wants to have a chance of catching her off guard.
And I’m still not sure if it’s worth your five dollars and 49 cents, but maybe I’m the one in the wrong here. Maybe this thing helps you throw it farther? Maybe it helps you make sure it goes where you want it to? (We don’t shame poor accuracy around here—after all, a large part of this blog is dedicated to a pitcher who not-infrequently throws fastballs six feet away from the strike zone.)
Whatever the case, it’s an entertaining look, and it’s clearly popular enough that I’ve seen multiple of them in the wild. And, judging by this video, it’s at least as functional as a human arm:
