A FlyingMAir YouTube channel “extra” featuring 7-month-old Lily & Rosie.
Here’s a little extra video featuring my two seven-month-old puppies, Rosie and Lily. They flew with me on a long cross country flight from Malaga, WA to McMinnville, OR and we made a precautionary landing due to weather at this minuscule airport in Woodland, WA. I shut down the helicopter and left them to take a pee; they realize they’re alone and start getting worried about it before they settle down. Happy ending, of course. This was their second time in a helicopter.
You can see all of the videos for this flight here:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/pgKDciGP4eA
Part 2: https://youtu.be/CmupuFDXa4Q
Part 3: https://youtu.be/vyveMEm_MhQ
Pups in a Helicopter: https://youtu.be/eEVq9sRlJK8 (this video)
Part 4: https://youtu.be/3KXR_D3SliA
Part 5: https://youtu.be/eghRyzhPigg
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I used to flight instruct in S-300s out of the Scottsdale Airpark back in the early 90s. There was a private owner with an R22 who took his dog with him every flight, a medium sized pitbull/German shepherd mix (maybe?). His dog absolutely loved going places with him, but didn’t much like the flying part. It would enthusiastically jump up into the passenger side footwell, then as soon as he started the engine and got the blades turning it would turn around facing backwards, tuck its head in a corner and stay like that until he landed and shut down. It went with him all over Arizona, and never looked out the windows at all. On the other side of the love-it / hate-it spectrum, I took several part 135 check rides with a check airman who always brought his Australian Shepherd / Husky mix dog with him. That dog loved everything about flying, paying attention and watching out the windows the whole time. If there had been sliding windows in the back of that Bell 212 it absolutely would have stuck its head out every chance it got. When we would slide open the cockpit windows or crack open the front doors on shut down it was like a hurricane of fur since it shed all the time. Even after losing an eye and half its teeth (and very nearly its life ) by walking into a spinning Super Cub propeller on the ramp It didn’t dampen the dogs enthusiasm for being around aircraft, though it did drool a lot more in the back. The company manager wasn’t too enthusiastic about the dog coming along (or the chain-smoking), but they fired the old chief pilot right after he was qualified as a check airman, and it was valid for almost a year afterwards. The new chief pilot turned out to be a dud who never did get checked out by the FAA, so the old guy just kept charging them more every time he came back to do checkrides. He didn’t really give a shit what management thought about the dog or the cigarettes since he knew he had them over a barrel.
My old Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix flew in the helicopter a few times and seemed genuinely interested in what was going on outside. My current pups — and even Penny before them — just curl up and go to sleep until the ride is over. Penny used to sit up front in the passenger seat, but I don’t trust the new pups enough yet and since they don’t mind being in back, I don’t mind keeping them that way. Penny loved going flying, even though she slept most of the flight; the new girls don’t seem to care. I think Penny just liked being with me and didn’t care where we went or how we got there.
Oddly, I was always worried about my old dog walking into a prop at the airport.