Flying with Dogs

Any DA40 related topics

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Tom Davis
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Flying with Dogs

Post by Tom Davis »

My wife and I have two dogs. One weighs about 80 lbs. and the other weighs about 55 lbs. We would like to find a reasonably easy and cheap way to fly with them in my DA40.

If any of you has any experience with dogs in your DA40, I will appreciate any advice, hints, and ideas.

N.B. It seems that this should have been asked before, but I could not find much with the search function. Sorry if this has been asked and answered before.

Thanks,

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Kai
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by Kai »

Tom,

I have been flying with my dog quite a lot. Unfortunately, he never made it cheaper, e.g. by purchasing a ticket or at least taking care of my fuel bills. He loves the DA40. As in any other plane, get him some mutt muffs and maybe a harness.

The search function here works, but I am not happy with it at all. Try google

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Nevertheless, nothing dog-/ Diamond-specific has ever been posted here, except for us and our doggies:

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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by Don »

My wife and I fly with our rescue dog, Lucky, quite a bit. We purchased some mutt muffs thinking it would make it easier on his ears. I readjusted them and tried them on myself in flight because I was curious how effective they were. I was very disappointed as they only cut maybe one or two DB of the engine noise. Back on the ground I disassembled one of the ear cups to see how it was constructed. I was surprised to find only a thin piece of open cell foam inside the ear cup. No wonder why they were so ineffective . They were quickly deposited into the trash can. Don't waste your money.

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Last edited by Don on Sun Oct 05, 2014 11:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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blsewardjr
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by blsewardjr »

Picture of our late dog, Lucy, in our DA40. She was not happy, but tolerated it.
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by blsewardjr »

New dog, Fisher, same old attitude. Part of it is probably the use of our car safety harness in the aircraft.
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Colin
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by Colin »

Is the safety harness to keep them out of your way or the belief that it will do a safety-belt like function for them? (The latter seems to be unnecessary, judging from the survival rate of pets vs. humans in cars.)
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by blsewardjr »

The safety harness is there to deal with possible turbulence and/or forced landings.
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by rwtucker »

Not much help for you Tom but perhaps others, we have two dogs -- Maltese (10 lbs) and Yorkie (6 lbs) -- that we crate trained for flying. They go to sleep shortly after takeoff and bark for us to let them out when we touchdown. A side benefit is that the crate is padded and pretty quiet inside. No dog muffs needed. Sometimes they go with me solo. It is nice having them there.
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by Chris »

We've done a lot of flying with dogs in the DA40, both with our two golden retrievers and with rescue animals for Pilots-n-Paws. For two large dogs, I don't think there's much to do other than try to get them comfortable in the back seat, with a harness if possible. We put a cover over the seat to try to protect it from scratches, although I haven't found a fool-proof way to secure it.
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Filling the foot wells with small bags and a blanket over the top effectively extends the seat for the dogs, but the drawback is that you likely won't be able to access any items stored there.

For smaller or medium sized dogs, crates are ideal. I have a medium size hard-shell case that fits nicely in the back with the seats folded down. We recently were given a wire-frame crate that will hold a much larger dog and which just barely fits in the back with the seats folded down.

For what it's worth, our dogs don't seem to mind the Mutt Muffs to much. Even though they aren't very well insulated for sound, dogs with floppy ears that can be kept against the head may benefit from that.
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Tom Davis
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Re: Flying with Dogs

Post by Tom Davis »

Thank all of you. I will appreciate any ideas on how to install a harness that will keep dogs from trying to sit in my lap while I am trying to land.

Tom Davis
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