Can a dog fly a plane? And, if it could, would you get in it? Victoria Stilwell, one of eight dog trainers on the new six-part reality show Dogs Might Fly, would. She’s a nervous flyer, but she can “confidently, 100% say yes”.
The show will see 12 stray dogs, handpicked from rescue shelters across the UK, put through their paces in a series of challenges from a puppetry performance to a drum lesson. Three finalists will graduate to flight school to try to prove that you can, in fact, teach an old dog a new trick.
So how do you go about training a canine for aviation? “A dog is a ground-based quadruped, so they’re not designed for flying – just as humans aren’t,” says Mark Vette, the show’s animal psychologist. “There were some issues with dexterity: how would they manipulate the yoke and the controls, and how they would they sit up comfortably?”
“The Civil Aviation Authority was adamant that we minimise changes to the plane,” he says. “We went through some pretty challenging experimentation …”
The trainers were looking for confidence, a strong ability to read human signals and a dog that is, as Stilwell puts it in wording more normally associated with a human headhunter, “willing to go the extra mile, to problem-solve and to investigate how to work something out for themselves. That’s the kind of dog you want flying a plane.”
The muttley crew includes Shadow, a staffordshire bull terrier that was just hours away from being put down by the council when the team discovered him. According to Stilwell, he’s “really good at unlocking doors”. He is such a top notch Houndini that during his audition he escaped twice.
“The TV crew were chanting, ‘Who let the dogs out’,” says Charlotte Wilde, a trainer who has supplied animals for the Harry Potter movies and Pirates of the Caribbean. “Shadow found love at the airfield – you’ll see in the final episode – and he has already taken a small part in a shoot. Hollywood, here he comes.”
Then there’s Spike, a terrier-mix, who was “brilliant at not doing any of the challenges and instead was intent on licking everybody’s faces, all the crew. You’re trying to get a shot and he’s in your face.” And there’s always one dog, says Stilwell, that “takes a dump right in the middle of the beautiful set”.
Challenges include an aviation-themed puppet show – the dogs play puppet master by using a series of specially designed platforms – a speedboat ride and the “rock performance of a lifetime”.
“You’ve got to make sure they don’t mind sound,” says Stilwell. The dogs are placed by a drum kit and rewarded for touching markers with their paws and noses, before moving on to important things such as drum kick pedals. But not every dog has the skills to be the next Ginger Barker or Phil Collie. One of Stilwell’s favourites, a beagle-mix called Spot, is “the funniest dog you’ll ever meet,” she says. “She couldn’t play the instruments so we taught her to sway, one paw to the other, and she became a backing vocalist. It’s so cute.”
The dogs also had time to relax in their luxury Sussex countryside pad, the Dog House. “As well as their very own dog studio,” says Wilde, “there were sofas and comfy dog beds. They didn’t learn how to operate the Aga, unfortunately – or the bathroom.”
“They were treated like royalty,” says Stilwell. “They had the most delicious treats, their own groomer and 24-hour vet care.” Bar the odd scuffle, the housemates got on too, which is refreshing for reality TV. Once they were out of the Dog House, each of the rescue dogs were placed in permanent, loving homes.
We’ve seen a dog driving a car and now, 59 years after a pooch was first shot into space, are we about to see the world’s first dog pilot? “It’ll be a surprise,” says Stilwell. “Watch the show and you’ll go ‘wow’.”
Dogs Might Fly is on Sky 1 at 7pm on 28 February.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion