Local pups may just fly

A South Yorkshire animal charity will feature in a new six-part Sky 1 series this weekend - about dogs flying planes.

Rain Rescue was visited by a film crew from Dogs Might Fly, a series featuring twelve unwanted and abandoned dogs attempting to achieve the impossible and become the first dog ever to fly a plane.

And two South Yorkshire pooches made the cut and will be on our screens this Sunday at 7pm when the first part airs.

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The series, produced by award-winning natural history specialist Oxford Scientific Films, explores dogs’ extraordinary ability. A team of experts and scientists explore communication, empathy, memory and reasoning with the dogs, resulting in the ultimate question: could a dog fly a plane?

A nationwide search for dogs from rescue centres uncovered Honey and Spot, both two-year-old crossbreeds who came to Rain Rescue in 2015. The successful candidates were all brought together at a luxurious mansion in the Sussex countryside for ten weeks of specialised training, where the underdogs were turned into top dogs and a chosen few went on to flight school, to take on the ultimate challenge: learning to fly a single engine aircraft.

The show was unable to reveal exactly what role Honey and Spot will play in the show, though Rain Rescue did reveal that, happily, both dogs have been adopted to new local families since filming finished.

According to a survey by The Dogs Trust, around 120,000 dogs find their way into UK rescue centres each year. Another 5,000 are put down by local authorities. Rain Rescue has saved the lives of thousands of stray dogs and abandoned cats from crisis situations in Yorkshire since they formed in 2002.