One Last Fetch: The Emotional Retirement of a 13-Year-Old Bat Dog
The retirement of beloved team members are always hard, especially when it’s an adorable dog who’s retiring. A bat dog named Layla recently went viral for retrieving her final baseball bat before ending her career.
Layla is a 13-year-old white Labrador Retriever who has been working as a bat dog for a minor league baseball team in Philadelphia, Clearwater Threshers, for six years. A bat dog’s job in baseball games is to collect the bats discarded by the hitters and bring them to the team’s dugout.
Last Day At The Job
Layla’s final working day was when Clearwater Threshers faced Fort Myers on Friday, July 19. When the dog came out to retrieve the last bat of her career, everyone erupted in cheers, claps, and whistles. (watch the video below)
The video posted by the team clearly shows how much the club and its fans loved Layla. She received a warm farewell from the team as well as from the crowd. But that’s not all. Her retirement celebration also included a bone-shaped baseball-themed cake, which Layla must have devoured.
After devoting so many years to the team, it is fitting that Layla receives this much adoration. The senior Lab’s story touched the hearts of the netizens too, as they outpoured immense love for the dog in the video’s comments section. An Instagrammer, Kay Lee, wrote, “Enjoy your retirement, my lady you have earned it 👏👏. Thank you for all the beautiful years.” Another user, Jonathan Foster, called Layla “a living legend ❤️.”
How It All Started
Layla’s journey of becoming a bat dog for the Threshers is incredibly interesting. This is not the first time the sweet girl has gone viral. In 2018, a viral video featured Layla fetching beer from the refrigerator for her dad, Andrew Davis.
As per Bleacher Report, Davis showed the video to Dominic Repper, manager of promotions and game entertainment at Clearwater Threshers. Following this, Repper got the idea of recruiting this smart and adorable Lab as their bat dog. Davis recounted, “When we first contacted the Threshers, Layla didn’t even know what a baseball bat was.”
Then, Davis started training Layla on a baseball field, where he would teach her to retrieve a bat and take it to the dugout. Soon after that, the dog started working for the baseball club in Philly, and the rest is history.
