Franklin Pet Ready Set Fetch Automatic Tennis Ball Launcher Dog Toy - Official Size Tennis Ball Thrower - Interactive Toy

Our pup is obsessed with this!! We play it twice a day for about 20 minutes at time or we go outside to play. Chasing and retrieving is life for our doodle. I found that when using tennis balls they get wet and don’t go as far so we have about 40 tennis balls and use each ball twice before moving on to the next one. The other thing is that many have stated it quit working after a bit. That happened to us. After two a day play time for two weeks ours started to get loud and slow down, to the point that the balls shooting out would bounce out about 2-3 feet away. Then it just stopped working. So I was going to throw it away and buy a new one. Like I said our dogs obsessed. Once I saw again how much I paid for it, I was not about to do that. So my son in law took it apart and found the two motors had collected all this dark hard melted plastic (tennis ball fuzz) and some un-melted tennis ball fluff that had been collected from all the tennis balls. Which explained the EXTRA long fuzz on the actual tennis balls as well. Had to use pliers and tweezers to get it out, wiped it clean, put it back together and it works like new. We are now using smooth plastic, rubber or foam like tennis balls and let me tell you no issues but they fly even further and we just need to wipe them down with a towel after each use or they don’t go far.

I've seen a lot of ball throwing machines that were quite a bit cheaper and the reviews weren't good. Most reviews were it stopped working when the balls got wet and they were more hassle than they were worth. I have two 100+ pound dogs who can get more spit on a ball than you could believe so I had to go with the expensive one. It is made in America which to me means quality. I live in Canada and there was an import fee of almost $28 on top of what I paid. My fingers were crossed it was going to be worth it. Well, my dogs just love it. Spitty balls keep flying out the end and if we didn't turn it off they would chase the balls forever. It's easily adjustable up and down for the launch angle and easy to set for distance. I thought the sound was kind of low, but the dogs can obviously hear it because they know when it's about to launch. Well worth the cost for a solid product. I would definitely recommend it.

Well made

On the positive side, although this comes with a US power supply, a US-to-UK adapter was included - the power supply is rated 110-240V input, so that's fine. The two balls that are supplied are quite light, but even so the launcher struggles to throw them more than 20 feet, certainly not the 40 feet advertised, even on full speed and the with the foot double-extended. If you push the balls in with some force they do go further, but the whole point is that the dogs can use it themselves (supervised, of course). With the foot extended the back of the hopper is almost horizontal making it harder for balls dropped in to fall into the launcher itself. Whether or not this turns out to be a worthwhile purchase depends on the dogs (a young Border Collie and scaredy-cat Rottie) get used to the noise. It's not overly loud, just a heavily greared-down motor running all the time, not just when the ball is dropped in.

It worked great for about an hour. Now it will not automatically push the ball through and I have to manually push it. Kind of defeats the purpose. This was a waste of money.