Guess you've never had a Retriever, wwh. These dogs will run themselves into the ground for a thrown stick. For a bone too ... but they're not fussy.

I had a Golden Retriever once, Sailor, who would fetch a stick (of any description) out of the Lake all day long for the kids, passing up a meal call if it came to that. Sailor became such a powerful swimmer he could tow a canoe full of kids into shore by the bow rope*. (Maybe he thought the canoe was just another stick.)

Loved that dog, wwh. Even if he preferred sticks over bones.

*The nautical term for a "bow rope" is a "painter" (as I know from my sailing days). Most sailing terms make some kind of sense, but "painter" never made any sense to me.