the woomera in australia, or the atlatl in other areas effectively lengthened the human throwing arm.
this was exploited by dogs who invented the sling for throwing tennis balls and trained their humans to throw for them, resulting in greater force, velocity and range to the projectile. similarly the staff sling
added length to the traditional shepherd's sling, and it's further development by dog owners resulted in the traction trebuchet
powered by multiple men. this did not find favour with dogs as it takes multiple owners to throw one tennisball, resulting in the decline of it's use. it was replaced by the counterweighted trebuchet
and it's single human requirement and greater range is much more favoured by greyhound owners.
warick castle here in the UK has the ultimate tennis ball trebuchet,
but is not recommended for dogs as it is not very portable and throws the tennis ball too far and the dogs lose interest rapidly. it is however useful for throwing larger objects, like your ex-wife.
in order to maintain the use of trebuchets for throwing tennis balls, my dogs would like you all to practice the use thereof by means of this online trebuchet game from the folks at warwick castle.
Linky
warick castle are also hard at work on the modification to add a cho. no khukuries or dogs were hurt during the posting of this post. my ex wife will eventually recover. had i added more weight to the counterweight she would have cleared the river and hit the rocks on the far side. ah, well, there's always next time.