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Dog returns nearly 80 lost balls to softball teams

South Cariboo resident, Whisper, really has a thing for softballs
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Whisper shows off her impressive collection of softballs collected. Submitted photos.

Whisper is a five-year-old border collie that loves to play fetch. However, while her owners usually throw a stick for her, she seems to prefer coming back with a ball.

Her owners, Sue and Ken Fryer, walk her behind the baseball fields in 100 Mile House where there’s a lot of tall grass.

They usually walk her early in the morning and sometimes in the early afternoon when there’s not baseball or softball on, says Sue.

“We usually don’t go at night because they’re playing and we don’t want her chasing or maybe getting hit.”

One evening, however, they did go out for a walk.

“There was a game on and she found a ball and there was a little boy about three years old chasing after the ball as well. She brought the ball back to the little boy and he, of course, grabbed it and brought it back for his reward and left her sitting there with a look on her face as if to say ‘wait a minute that’s my ball.’”

A scorekeeper at the game, Millie Halcro, pays the younger children $1 for each returned foul ball.

READ MORE: Scorekeeper volunteers time to keep baseball alive in 100 Mile House

Sue says Whisper has pretty much always been collecting balls but it’s a little different this season.

“This year it seems every morning she goes out she comes back with a ball.”

That amounted to a pile of close to 80 balls, she says. They brought the balls back to the players.

“There’s no point in us keeping them. A lot of people told us to sell them but they weren’t ours to begin with, as far as we’re concerned.”

Many of the balls had team stamps on them making them easy to return, says Sue.

“We had members of all the teams come up and they just picked whatever belonged to them,” she says. “The rest of the balls were put in a locker for any of the teams to take.”

“They were more than excited to see that many and they were all in very good condition. They haven’t been in the grass for very long because she’s out there every day

“She just loves doing it.”


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It was a little debatable how “voluntary” Whisper considered returning the balls to the players.