Dogs for Defense

A marine takes a nap on Iwo Jima, guarded by his scout dog

Unlike many other countries, when the United States entered World War II, they didn’t have a canine corps. But the military came to believe that dogs would prove an asset, so in March 1942 a war dog program was introduced. Since they were already at war, the military needed a large number of dogs right away, so they asked Americans to volunteer their pet dogs for service.
In the beginning, they accepted almost any kind of medium- to larger-size dog—around 30 different breeds. But as they worked with the dogs, the military found that some breeds were better for service than others and limited the accepted breeds to mostly German Shepherds, Belgian Sheep Dogs, Doberman Pinschers, Farm Collies, Giant Schnauzers, and mutts that were predominantly any of those breeds. Americans volunteered almost 20,000 of their beloved pets, but only about half of that number were accepted and trained. Of the trained dogs, only around 2,000 of them were finally sent overseas; the rest were used stateside.

Servicemen and their war dogs

The vast majority of dogs the military accepted were trained as sentry dogs. These dogs were used as guard dogs at airfields, depots, industrial plants, and so on. Almost one-third (about 3,000) of dogs trained for sentry duty were used by the coast guard to patrol and guard the shoreline. Sentry dogs worked on a leash with a military handler and had to be aggressive and moderately smart; they were trained to attack only if they were ordered to or if their handler was threatened.
The best-known dogs trained by the military were scout dogs. Scout dogs, along with their handlers, went ahead of patrols to detect if there were any enemy nearby and were trained to silently alert their handlers if they detected anyone. Scout dogs were especially helpful in the jungles of the South Pacific, and they were so good at what they did, that patrols with scout dogs had far fewer casualties than those without.
There were three other types of dogs trained by the military, but they were used less than sentry and scout dogs. Sled and pack dogs were used in snowy areas. Mine detection dogs were used to try to locate mines, but when they were tested in North Africa, they weren’t found to be very effective. Messenger dogs were trained to trust two different handlers so that the dogs would be able to carry messages from one man to the other across difficult or dangerous terrain or when other communications systems were down.