Meet the daredevil grandmother who has done nearly 500 paraglides – with her pet DOG. Corinne Dhenin, 68, loves jumping off mountains with her furry friend Phoebe as a passenger. She climbs up with the pooch at her heel – sometimes reaching peaks as high as 8,000ft. Corinne reckons she’s done nearly 500 leaps with a pooch – more than 230 with Phoebe, and the rest with Megabyte. She also enjoys hang gliding, speed riding – a ski sport – and piloting microlight planes. And Corinne, from Geneva, says people criticise her involving the dog but she doesn’t care – as Phoebe, a boxer, loves it. She said: “I started on very small slopes with Megabyte, our first flight was only one metre in the air. Then I took her higher and higher. “Eventually we were doing flights of about 3,000ft, from top to bottom of different mountains. “When I first took Phoebe flying, she was six months old and attached in front of me – she panicked and tried to climb up me in the air. “But she soon realised she was okat and wasn’t going to fall. And now, on flight 230, she’s used to it. “We’re flying almost every day basically, being retired I just do that – we climb and fly together. “When a lot of people find out I fly with my dog their reaction is that it’s not fair on the dog – I want to make it clear that my dog likes coming with me. “She gets the most wonderful life, she’s out climbing mountains all day long and I do it for her – I’m not being selfish or anything, the dog loves it just as much as I do.” Corinnework as a manager for a market research company, first started hang gliding in 1981, during the early years of the sport. Due to the cumbersome nature, she converted to paragliding which she says pairs well with climbing mountains solo. Now the mum-of-three and grandmother-of-four has been paragliding for over 15 years and has 1,300 flights under her belt. She says she also enjoys speed riding which she describes as ‘half skiing, half flying’ and has even traversed from France to Morocco using a microlight – a petrol powered hang glider.
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