This is not a joke.
A New Zealand dog trainer named Mark Vette has successfully trained a rescue dog, Reggie, to fly a plane — for 15 minutes.
Matt Young reports for Australia’s News.com.au, April 8, 2016, that animal trainer and zoologist Mark Vette not only trained three rescue dogs, Reggie, Shadow and Alfie, to drive a car, in a world first, he also successfully trained the canines to fly a plane, and even perform tricks, including a figure 8 maneuver.
Vette worked with the rescue dogs for four months in the UK last year, for the series, Dogs Might Fly, which is only just airing in Britain.
Vette told news.com.au, “The human-dog relationship is one that has co-evolved over the last 30,000-50,000 years, it’s an incredibly subtle and complex relationship. It takes a lot of training and a lot of work and integration to build that collaboration but it’s amazing, the more I’ve flown with the dogs the more intuitive they get.”
The process involved training the dogs on a flight simulator with colored signals to indicate which direction the dog should fly: blue to turn left, red to turn right, and white to continue straight ahead.
Reggie is the world’s first dog to successfully fly for 15 minutes straight.
Vette said, “It’s a two way trust because you’re in a potentially dangerous environment. It can be all over, you’ve got to be careful. We love to do these crazy and amazing performances but at the end of the day we’re trying to show that rescue dogs are smart dogs, this is why we’re doing it.”
You can sign up to Mark Vette’s newsletter to get free training tips at www.dogzen.com.
~Eowyn