Dog Driving
A charity in New Zealand is teaching rescued dogs how to drive a car in a big to attract potential owners.

An animal rescue centre in New Zealand is teaching dogs how to drive in a surreal effort to find them new homes.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals trained three dogs, Monty, Porter and Ginny, to start a car, accelerate, steer and even change gears.

Before getting behind the specially adapted wheel of the real thing, the canines spent weeks honing their skills in a mock vehicle.

The charity hopes that by teaching the dogs to drive it will prove their level of intelligence and encourage more potential owners to come forward to give them a good home.

Trainer Mark Vette said: "We 'chain' behaviours together. In this case we've got 10 behaviours we're putting together, then you put them into a sequence.

"It's a lot to do and for the dog to actually start to get an idea of what is happening takes quite a long time.

"So we'll start the car, get into position, brake on, gear in place, back on to the steering wheel, accelerator, take off and hoon [drive fast] along the straight and then stop."

He admitted that it had not been a smooth ride going from the mock car to the real thing.

"A couple of days ago the car was going too fast, the trainer nearly got run over," he said.

Watch the dogs in action here:

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