A Brief and Glorious History of America’s Canine Warriors
Military dogs like the one made famous by the raid in Syria have a long pedigree
--
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi likely died with the sound of one of America’s most fearsome warriors still ringing in his ears.
In the aftermath of the Saturday night raid on al-Baghdadi’s compound in Syria’s northeastern Idlib province, U.S. officials revealed that it was a military working dog that pursued the elusive terror kingpin into the dead-end subterranean tunnel where he ignited his suicide vest, killing himself and three children he used as human shields. Of the U.S.’s elite forces who conducted the raid, only the dog was injured.
That a military working dog was involved in the raid is unsurprising: since 9/11, Man’s Best Friend has become an increasingly critical element of the Global War on Terror. And as of Monday, the Unites States’ new favorite Good Boy — reportedly a female Belgian Malinois, the same breed as Cairo, the dog that accompanied Navy SEALs on the mission that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had already returned to duty downrange. (Surprisingly, the dog’s name remains classified, though reports suggest her name is Conan.)
That Trump, the first president in a century without a dog in the Oval Office, reportedly wants to meet with Conan at the White House isn’t just astounding, but wholly unprecedented given that, for decades, the valor of military working dogs has gone wholly unrecognized. Dogs have been an integral part of U.S. military strategy since they started entering the service in World War II. Below, a brief history of U.S. military working dogs — and their rising stardom at home.
WWII: The birth of the K-9 Corps
While dogs have been employed in military conflicts from detecting intruders to hauling artillery, the only military working dogs employed by the U.S. Army prior to the U.S. entry into World War II were the roughly 50 sled dogs assigned to…
