Doctor Lyla Yip forwarded me an email about a kind of rubber ball that is soft-skinned, bumpy, and has only one hole in it. There were some gruesome pictures of a dog that lost its tongue because the suction created by this type of ball sucked its tongue into the hole, and the tongue swelled. Apparently there are a lot of cases of this kind of disaster.
Suzette and I found one of these balls on the ground while we were walking the dogs. It's true, it does create a powerful suction through the one hole. However, I did an experiment and my hypothesis was correct: The thing to do if you find one of these is to poke another hole in the ball - preferably before your dog's tongue gets caught. I used a screwdriver to poke a hole in the other side of the ball we found, and it now no longer creates suction. It also doesn't hold its shape so rigidly if squeezed, but, hey, you can't have everything. Physics rules.
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