The idea of “ball addiction” is bonkers.
There is no such a thing.
Here’s how the theory goes, however. You play fetch with your dog every day. So, whenever your dog is around, your dog now brings you a ball so you will toss it. When you don’t toss the ball, the dog barks, develops anxiety disorders, and OCD. Voilà! Your dog now has a dangerous case of Ball Addiction.
I worked with such a dog. An adult Yellow Lab. The owner, retired, would toss a ball for his dog as the primary way they interacted. But when the owner wanted to end the game, the dog would bark at him and keep dropping a ball in front of him.
It wasn’t that hard to solve. We put the balls away. Gave the dog other activities. And the ball was only out when the owner wanted to play fetch, and then it was put away when the game was over. We also made the dog start working for the ball (there are a lot of interesting avenues for this to turn play into something useful, especially for working dogs, but that is for another article).
A dog can learn to bark as a way to get you to toss a ball. That is pretty easy to teach and pretty easy to control or stop. That isn’t an addiction. Addiction is a pretty strong word with serious implications: it would be defined in some way as a medical disorder. But in this case, using a ball. The closest thing to an addiction using a prey stimulation would be playing using a laser pointer with a dog, and that will cause problems since the stimulus is a moving light and the prey drive goal, the obtaining of a physical prey object or animal, can never be accomplished. That doesn’t happen with a ball.
No, a dog won’t develop a disorder if you play fetch with your dog. Could a dog develop some kind of displacement behavior if you withheld the ball and put the dog in some kind motivational conflict? Maybe. Also pretty easy to solve. Don’t put the dog in conflict.
This type of, what I would call, scare mongering, is a misdiagnosing of normal dog play. If all you do, if the only way the dog gets pleasure, is to play fetch, then that is what the dog is going to be looking forward to doing. It isn’t a disorder. If you want to change things, then do other stuff, like going for walks, giving the dog a chew toy, take a road trip, watch TV together at dinner, and all the normal things people do with their dogs.
Dogs like to play. Then there are other things to do. Working dogs all do some variation of fetch to do their jobs, that doesn’t make them addicted.
Even wolves, adults and pups, like to play: Chase, tackle, wrestle, tug of war, hide n seek, play with a stick or bone. Then when it is time to go to work, they do.
It isn’t that complicated.
BA, Ball Addiction is BS.
Want some more perspective?
Ecclesiastes 3:3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.
13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.
14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.