522 Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation
The United States started using dogs in war
during World War II. Interestingly, the first
American war dogs were actually sled dogs
from Alaska, shipped to Greenland to find lost
pilots and to support the 10th Mountain
Infantry as pack animals during cold weather
operations. These imported American sled
dogs probably introduced distemper and rabies
into Greenland canine populations, which had
been free of these diseases prior to the start of
the war. Eventually, a Marine K9 Corps was
developed using civilian-donated dogs that
were trained to act first as sentries then as scout
and messenger dogs (Lemish, 2008). From this
humble start, the use of military working dogs
(MWDs) progressed to their use in Korea,
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. MWDs are
now used for explosives or drug detection,
sentry duty, tracking, and attack functions, and
are even parachuted into hostile areas with
their handlers (US War Dogs Association: Types
of war dogs). In 1942, during the early stages of
World War II, the desire to provide help for sol-
diers returning home disabled by blindness led
to the development of dog guides for the
blind—the first modern service dog usage.
Today, in the 21st century, a better scientific
understanding of the dog’s vast and sensitive
olfactory capacity combined with increasing
security needs have resulted in a marked
increase in the use of detection and service dogs
in many different working capacities. Scent-
based working dogs are used to detect every-
thing from bed bugs to cancer to drugs to
explosives to humans (alive or in various post-
mortem stages) to endangered animal feces (for(B)(C)(A)Figure 21.2 World War I saw the first large-scale use of war dogs in military history. (A) Ambulance dogs, also known
as mercy dogs, wearing saddle bags of medical supplies, sought out the wounded and gave comfort to the dying. Large
dogs were used to pull heavy guns (B), and fast medium-sized dogs were used as messengers (C), and these were
credited with saving thousands of lives by delivering vital dispatches when phone lines broke down. Source: (A, B) W. E.
Mason. (C) The State of Queensland. Public domain—WikimediaCommons.