Yes, they forgot the apostrophe, so the Dad took “Have you seen the dogs bowl?” to mean “Have you seen the dogs go bowling?”
Oohhh OK, now I get it. I was missing that ‘bowl’ is short for bowling.
It’s not short for bowling (although it can be expressed like that too), it’s the infinitive form of the verb, to bowl. “Have you seen the birds fly?”
You could also read it as a vowel.
(in bowling) to roll a ball along a smooth surface during a game of bowls or bowling
(in Cricket) to throw a ball towards a batsman (= the player who hits the ball) using a vertical circular movement of the arm while running:
While that gives the response more legitimacy, dads don’t actually care about the grammar and will make a smart ass response just based on how the question sounds.
