Just call him “Air Bud.”
A daredevil dog demonstrated nerves of steel by seemingly fearlessly BASE-jumping off a more than 2,000-foot-tall cliff with his owner, as seen in this hair-raising clip.
The heart-stopping video shows the brave border collie, named Kazuza, preparing for the jump with caretaker Bruno Valente, 38, who outfits the 6-year-old pup with his own safety harness. “I am more scared than him,” Valente intones as they sidle up to the ledge of a 2,300-foot-high cliff in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.
Valente then scoops up Kazuza and jumps off the edge with his intrepid companion in tow before deploying the parachute as the pair plummets down to the ground thousands of feet below. After landing safely in the grass, the courageous collie can be seen giving his owner a high-five with its paw.
“BASE” is an acronym that stands for the objects from which one can jump: building, antenna, span and earth (cliff), and is deemed one of the world’s most dangerous activities due to the low altitudes, reports HowStuffWorks.com.
This isn’t Kazuza’s first time at the BASE-jumping rodeo. “He has done around 40-something jumps with me,” gushes a proud Valente, who documents the duo’s death-defying stunts on his Instagram page. In one of the nail-biting shots, the plucky paw-ratrooper can be seen paragliding with his owner high above Nazare, Portugal. In fact, Valente says the only time Kazuza didn’t participate was “at the beginning when I started to BASE-jump.”
However, while leaping off cliffs might seem like Kazuza’s calling, his BASE-jumping career was borne out of necessity. “A bunch of times I couldn’t jump as I had nobody to take care of him,” Valente tells SWBRjump, adding, “so that’s when the idea came.”
Naturally, some might criticize the notion of involving your pooch in a perilous pursuit whose fatality rate is five times higher than skydiving, according to research published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. However, Valente insists that Kazuza loves it.
“Obviously I can’t say 100% because I don’t talk his language, but his body language tells me that he wants to go,” says Valente.
Jokke Sommer, 33, who recorded the high-flying feat, seconded his sentiment: “If he didn’t want to do jumps with you, he’d be very clear on that.”
He adds, “He’s the luckiest dog in the world. He’s very well trained and has a lot of trust in Bruno.”
