Dogs Pass Driving Test
Following their test drive last week, Monty, Porter and Ginny headed out to the auto racing track in Auckland, New Zealand, where Monty joined other great historical “firsts” like Neil Armstrong as he became the first dog to officially drive a car.
(Yes, we’ve all seen other pooches slipping into the driving seat and careening off across supermarket parking lots, but this is a whole other order of driving capability.)
In this video, we see Monty take the wheel, drive down the track, and make an emergency stop.
In the longer version below, Christine Kalin of the Auckland SPCA then explains the purpose of this feat – to show the abilities of shelter dogs. (She has certainly made her point; video of the training and then the big day has become one of the biggest worldwide viral videos of all time.)
And then news reporter Tristram Clayton gets in the car with Porter as he heads off down the track and negotiates a hairpin bend. (He veers onto the grass and needs a push from a trainer, but I guess that’s happened to many of us human drivers, too.)
The whole video, from Channel 3 News, runs about 15 minutes:
And here’s David Letterman with his Top Ten Signs Your Dog Is a Bad Driver: