Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chocolate Bardies, and today
Speaker 1: Debilina and I are going to be talking about dogs,
Speaker 1: but specifically war dogs. Yes, I mean dogs are one
Speaker 1: of my favorite topics. Anyway, I am a your dog. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm the owner of an adorable wheat and terrier named Juley,
Speaker 1: and I talked about him, probably way too much, but
Speaker 1: that's not what inspired this podcast. Um. Actually, the news did, right, Sarah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: war dogs have been in the news quite a bit lately,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure many of you have realized. After Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden was killed and it was revealed that a
Speaker 1: war dog, more appropriately a military working dog was present, Um,
Speaker 1: it got people's attention. People wanted to know about these
Speaker 1: militarily inclined dogs. It It's been on our minds really
Speaker 1: for longer than that, because we have quite a bit
Speaker 1: of Animal Planet content that we work on here at
Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot com, and um, war dogs come up
Speaker 1: from time to time, and those articles. Yeah, actually, one
Speaker 1: that we're going to mention today came up last year
Speaker 1: when we were editing some bully breed content, so that
Speaker 1: will be something that you can read about later too, exactly.
Speaker 1: And we even have an article on war dogs too,
Speaker 1: which will throw to you at the end. But our
Speaker 1: very own editor, Alison louder Milk, recommended it to her
Speaker 1: to us and it was sort of the final push
Speaker 1: to get us going on this topic. But we have
Speaker 1: talked about dogs before, or rather Katie and Candice have
Speaker 1: more like historical pooches of famous people, and Katie and
Speaker 1: I have talked about war horses of history, so Napoleon's Marango,
Speaker 1: Roberty Lee's traveler, Babiaka who is Il Sid's horse. But
Speaker 1: in case you haven't listened to that episode, we really
Speaker 1: didn't get much beyond the Civil War because horses, of course,
Speaker 1: even though they were used for thousands of years in
Speaker 1: battle all around the world, eventually became obsolete military technology.
Speaker 1: That is not the case with dogs. No war dogs
Speaker 1: and Sah mentioned they're now more properly called military working
Speaker 1: dogs were used probably as far back as when humans
Speaker 1: domesticated the gray wolf, and they're still used today. Since
Speaker 1: there's still no better means of detecting an i e. D.
Speaker 1: Than a dog's nose yea, even the most complex technology
Speaker 1: can't compete. And there are a few qualities and you're
Speaker 1: gonna see these pop up in the different dogs, the
Speaker 1: different individual dogs we talk about. But a few qualities
Speaker 1: that make dogs useful for warfare throughout history. One, their
Speaker 1: strength and loyalty makes them really good fighters. Also, their
Speaker 1: endurance makes them good messengers, and their intelligence and eagerness
Speaker 1: to please make them trainable. Yeah, and then there's their
Speaker 1: size too, and that's something which of course varies a
Speaker 1: lot between breeds, and it makes them either really big
Speaker 1: and intimidating and strong or tiny and able to go
Speaker 1: where pep bull can't very easily go. So, starting sort
Speaker 1: of in the early days with ancient warfare, ancient Persians, Syrians, Babylonians,
Speaker 1: and Greeks all are known to have used dogs in war,
Speaker 1: usually as shock troops. They'd have a line of mastiffs,
Speaker 1: which if I was fighting and a lot of mastiffs
Speaker 1: came charging at me, I would definitely stop and give
Speaker 1: pause for a minute. It's probably massives that you think
Speaker 1: of too, if you're considering ancient warfare. Ancient dogs in warfare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're Egyptian monuments to that effect as far back as
Speaker 1: three thousand BC that show massiff like dogs. These are
Speaker 1: actually imported Masstiffs after seeing them fight with British soldiers
Speaker 1: in fifty five BC, and he used them for things
Speaker 1: like bull baiting, lion fighting, things like that, even fighting gladiator.
Speaker 1: But if you're thinking about war dogs today or even
Speaker 1: of the past century, you're probably not thinking of mastiffs.
Speaker 1: You're probably thinking of two breeds in particular that are
Speaker 1: now almost synonymous with military working dogs. These were both
Speaker 1: developed around the turn of the twentieth century in Germany
Speaker 1: and they've been used heavily in most of the centuries
Speaker 1: major wars. And those are German Shepherds, which were bred
Speaker 1: by Captain Max von Stephanits to be trainable, loyal, and intelligent.
Speaker 1: The American Kennel Club describes them as or their characters
Speaker 1: as incorruptible. Makes me imagine Elliott nests German shepherds or something.
Speaker 1: The other one of those major breeds as the Doberman pincher,
Speaker 1: which they were bred around the same time as we
Speaker 1: mentioned in Germany, to have high endurance, speed and smarts.
Speaker 1: And there are a few other large intelligent breeds that
Speaker 1: pop up from time to time, the Belgian sheep dog
Speaker 1: farm colleagues, giant Schnauzers, and a few notable MutS too
Speaker 1: that we're going to mention. Uh, the U. S Military
Speaker 1: now uses a lot of pure bred labs because they
Speaker 1: are really good at sniffing things out and they have
Speaker 1: that easy, friendly, calm demeanor. Well calm is probably not
Speaker 1: the best word for labs, but easy going nice. But
Speaker 1: we're not just going to talk about big dogs, because
Speaker 1: little dogs certainly have their place in war history too, because,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, little dogs can go places where
Speaker 1: people can't. Right. In World War One, little terriers were
Speaker 1: actually used as cigarette dogs to distribute free tobacco to
Speaker 1: troops and the trenches, and terrier breeds like Jack Russell's
Speaker 1: would also patrol the trenches for rats, so they were
Speaker 1: perfect for that because of their size and their prey drive,
Speaker 1: their inclination too for those things well, and a little
Speaker 1: less likely to get shell shocked than kitties. Kitties and
Speaker 1: trenches doesn't sound like a good combination. So our first
Speaker 1: dog we're going to talk about was actually a rater,
Speaker 1: and we don't know that much about her except that
Speaker 1: she did her job really, really well. And this dog
Speaker 1: is now nicknamed Hatch. We don't know what her real
Speaker 1: name was. World discuss the origins of that nickname in
Speaker 1: a little bit. But she was a two year old
Speaker 1: who lived aboard the tutor warship the mary Rose, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about before on our shipwreck episode. The mary Rose,
Speaker 1: as probably a lot of you remembers, thank in battle
Speaker 1: July nineteen and most of the men on board went
Speaker 1: down with the ship, as did little Hatch. However, the
Speaker 1: mary Rose Trust recovered hatches skeleton and eventually reassembled it
Speaker 1: and now is in the process of analyzing the skeleton
Speaker 1: or the skeleton is being analyzed by experts to try
Speaker 1: to figure out what kind of breed it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And according to Rear Admiral John Lippiatt of the mary
Speaker 1: Rose Trust, quote analysis of Hatch's bones suggests that she
Speaker 1: spent most of her life within the confines of the ship.
Speaker 1: It is likely that the longest walk she took were
Speaker 1: along the keyside at Port Smith. So not a very
Speaker 1: exciting life for poor little Hatch. But since she was
Speaker 1: found wedged in the sliding door of the carpenter's cabin,
Speaker 1: that's the nickname. Yeah, that's the nickname. Some have suggested
Speaker 1: that she was the carpenter's pet or maybe a ship mascot,
Speaker 1: so at least maybe she had an okay life on ship,
Speaker 1: but evidence of only partial rats skeletons aboard the wreck
Speaker 1: suggests that pet or not Hatch, was a rat or
Speaker 1: a Sarah mentioned, and a pretty good one if you're
Speaker 1: surprised that they had a dog as a rat, as
Speaker 1: I kind of was. Cats apparently were considered bad luck
Speaker 1: in Tutor times to have aboard your ship, although since
Speaker 1: the mary Rose think anyway, I don't know if it
Speaker 1: really would have helped or hurt much more. But now
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead, fast forward, way past Tutor times
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century, and that's where the rest of
Speaker 1: our dogs lives are going to take place in their story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've talked about dogs used in ancient warfare and
Speaker 1: a dog on the mary Rose, But when you fast
Speaker 1: forward to the twineth century, as Sarah said, they're pretty
Speaker 1: much it's pretty much not done dogs in warfare, at
Speaker 1: least in the US. Even though state side kennel clubs
Speaker 1: had lobbied for dogs in combat, there was no formal
Speaker 1: war dog program during World War One, for example, but
Speaker 1: there were still some mascot dogs here and there in
Speaker 1: the trenches with US troops, and America's first Canaan war hero,
Speaker 1: a bull terrier mix named Stubby, was one of them.
Speaker 1: So Stubby got involved in the war effort during the
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen seventeen, kind of by accident. He just
Speaker 1: wandered onto the grounds of Yale where a training camp
Speaker 1: for the hundred and second Infantry, twenty six Yankee Division
Speaker 1: was taking place, and he seemed to be a few
Speaker 1: weeks old, definitely astray, and he proved to be a
Speaker 1: hit with the soldiers. They let him stay and supposedly
Speaker 1: the dog was became one of them pretty quickly too.
Speaker 1: He would drill with them, he learned to salute, and
Speaker 1: Private J. Robert Conroy became Stubbies primary caretaker and they
Speaker 1: named him Stubby because of his cropped tail, so a
Speaker 1: little affectionate ribbing there with the dog. So when it
Speaker 1: was time for the one second Infantry to ship out
Speaker 1: to Europe, they smuggled Stubby aboard the s S Minnesota
Speaker 1: by pulling him through a porthole with a rope. So
Speaker 1: they went to Great Links to take their friend along
Speaker 1: with them, and after they landed in France, Stubby stayed
Speaker 1: with his unit, went to winter training with them, and
Speaker 1: then joined the troops and the trenches. He participated in
Speaker 1: seventeen engagements altogether in four World War One offensives, and
Speaker 1: he never seemed to want to flee even with all
Speaker 1: that shelling going on around him constantly. So there are
Speaker 1: several stories about Stubby's war adventures, including how he got
Speaker 1: gassed once and this made him more sensitive to the
Speaker 1: smell of gas and better able to detect gas attacks,
Speaker 1: so he would be able to detect them and then
Speaker 1: sort of warn his fellow soldiers about it. But perhaps
Speaker 1: the most famous story about him is one that involves
Speaker 1: the capture of a German spy. Yeah, and there are
Speaker 1: a few different versions slightly different versions of that story.
Speaker 1: According to one, Stubby was sleeping in a trench one
Speaker 1: night when he suddenly awoke and ran off into this
Speaker 1: small patch of brush, and his caretaker, Conroy, heard a
Speaker 1: voice cry out soon after and went to check and
Speaker 1: see what was going on with it. He found Stubby
Speaker 1: with his teeth sunk into the rear end of a
Speaker 1: German spy who had been bi the making a map
Speaker 1: of the Allied trenches. So the soldiers disarmed the spy. Stubby, however,
Speaker 1: wasn't so willing to let go and finally had to
Speaker 1: be Coke's pride, off of off of the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can see pictures of Stubby online if you
Speaker 1: look him up, and he's not a very large dog.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of funny to imagine this little dog
Speaker 1: hanging off the back of someone's but basically it looked
Speaker 1: like a dog who could who could bite in and
Speaker 1: hold on them he does. Yeah, I mean that Animal
Speaker 1: Planet content that we mentioned at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: episode that we edited last year, and it was a
Speaker 1: batch of content about bully breeds and that's where Stubby
Speaker 1: came up in in our research with that. And one
Speaker 1: thing that people kind of associate with bully breeds is
Speaker 1: that they have a really strong bite. So then his blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think you're probably right about that. But Stubby
Speaker 1: received many honors for his heroics after the armistice. He
Speaker 1: met President Woodrow Wilson when the President visited his regiment
Speaker 1: in France on Christmas Day nineteen eighteen, and he returned
Speaker 1: with his unit to the States in nineteen nineteen Stubby did.
Speaker 1: That is, in nineteen one, General John J. Pershing awarded
Speaker 1: him a gold medal, and later Stubby was designated an
Speaker 1: honorary sergeant, So that's usually how you see his name
Speaker 1: put out there. Meanwhile, though, back in the state, Stubby
Speaker 1: was participating in veterans parades and went to American Legion conventions.
Speaker 1: In nineteen nineteen twenty three, he became the official mascot
Speaker 1: of Georgetown University because his still master Conroy, was attending
Speaker 1: law school there. And by nineteen six Stubby died, but
Speaker 1: he was not forgotten. He was stuffed, although that's not
Speaker 1: exactly the best way of putting it. Instead, a plaster
Speaker 1: cast was made of his body and his skin was
Speaker 1: mounted over that cast, and his cremated remains were interred
Speaker 1: within the cast. Kind of complicated, and for a while
Speaker 1: he was on display at the National Red Cross Museum,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen fifty six, Conroy presented him to
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and today he's
Speaker 1: on display the National Guard Armory in Hartford, Connecticut, so
Speaker 1: you can still go check out what Stubby looked like.
Speaker 1: So Stubby made it into World War One sort of
Speaker 1: by chance he had to hitch a ride, essentially. But
Speaker 1: just because the US didn't officially use dogs in World
Speaker 1: War One combat didn't mean that other countries didn't use
Speaker 1: dogs a lot. So the Germans deployed approximately thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dogs during the war, the French and the British another
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dogs. And we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: few of those dogs, a few French dogs in our
Speaker 1: next entry. Yeah, And French dogs are interesting because they
Speaker 1: had a lot of different roles in war. They'd work
Speaker 1: as sentries, ratters, and cigarette dogs. Some were Red Cross
Speaker 1: casualty dogs or mercy dogs who would bring medical supplies
Speaker 1: to troops injured on the field. PROUSTC, a French Red
Speaker 1: Cross dog, for example, supposedly saved the lives of more
Speaker 1: than a hundred men in a single day, dragging some
Speaker 1: of them back to the trenches. But in World War One,
Speaker 1: one of the most important responsibilities of war dogs was
Speaker 1: actually message delivery. They could be trained to deliver messages
Speaker 1: either one way, or to carry messages back and forth
Speaker 1: with two handlers in different units. You normally think of
Speaker 1: messengers in World War One as carrier pigeons, but Unlike
Speaker 1: carrier pigeons, dogs obviously couldn't avoid the gas clouds by
Speaker 1: just flying over them, so these messenger dogs were sometimes
Speaker 1: outfitted with gas masks to protect them while they were
Speaker 1: carrying these important notes between camps. But one of the
Speaker 1: most famous messenger dogs from World War One was an
Speaker 1: all black English Greyhound working Collie cross named Satan. And
Speaker 1: Satan turns out to be a really good dog, so
Speaker 1: terrible name. I guess she just got that name because
Speaker 1: she might have been a little scary looking. But during
Speaker 1: the Battle of Verdun, Satan's French handler and a small
Speaker 1: garrison that was with him were cut off from the
Speaker 1: rest of their troops and were under terribly heavy fire
Speaker 1: behind enemy lines. They had run out of their pigeons
Speaker 1: and they had nothing left to pass along the specifics
Speaker 1: and their situation, like the coordinates of the German forces
Speaker 1: that were selling them that needed to be silenced in
Speaker 1: order to relieve the garrison. So it really seemed like
Speaker 1: a hopeless situation. They were just going to get shelled
Speaker 1: until they were all gone. Yeah. Finally, though, the men
Speaker 1: saw a black dot racing towards them across the field,
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be Satan in a gas
Speaker 1: mask delivering a message from the French. But when he
Speaker 1: was almost to safety, Satan was hit in the leg
Speaker 1: by a German sniper and he laid down on the ground. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: according to the Harper's Magazine article that the story was
Speaker 1: originally told in, when Satan's handler saw the dog shot,
Speaker 1: he got to the top of the trench to call
Speaker 1: him himself, to try to urge him on, to try
Speaker 1: to get him to keep going. A handler was shot dead,
Speaker 1: but not until after Satan heard his voice and did
Speaker 1: in fact get up and started on three legs, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he arrived finally. His neck tube contained a message
Speaker 1: that said, for God's sake, hold on, will send troops
Speaker 1: to relieve you tomorrow. But more importantly than that message,
Speaker 1: he had a basket with two it's always described as
Speaker 1: two very frightened pigeons. I'm sure they were frightened, and
Speaker 1: the French used these pigeons dashed off two identical messages
Speaker 1: that had the coordinates of the Germans and sent the
Speaker 1: birds off. One pigeon was killed, but the other safely
Speaker 1: delivered the coordinates and thus saved the garrison. So it
Speaker 1: was a joint effort of that pigeon and Satan but
Speaker 1: managed to to help him out. So that was World
Speaker 1: War One. But by the time World War Two rolled around,
Speaker 1: the Army finally agreed that it needed to involve canines
Speaker 1: and its efforts, so they started what was called the
Speaker 1: Canine Core, and the first official canines were enlisted by
Speaker 1: their owners. Owners actually donated more than forty dogs to
Speaker 1: this cause, which is pretty amazing to think of just
Speaker 1: signing your dog up to to go off to war,
Speaker 1: but you don't know if he's going to come back
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, in an environment where you're probably
Speaker 1: sending your kids off to it wouldn't have been so strange. Exactly.
Speaker 1: One of those dogs that was donated to the war
Speaker 1: effort was Chips, a German Shepherd mix who was born
Speaker 1: and basically just living a dog's life in Pleasantville, New
Speaker 1: York when he was appropriate right whose owners enlisted him
Speaker 1: in the Canine Core. But from Pleasantville, Chips went into
Speaker 1: training and got sent to Morocco, and later he was
Speaker 1: part of the security force that protected Roosevelt when Roosevelt
Speaker 1: met with Churchill at Casablanca. But Chips probably best known
Speaker 1: for the work he did in July nine with General
Speaker 1: George Patton's seventh Army as they came ashore in Sicily.
Speaker 1: So the morning of July tenth, Chips and his handler
Speaker 1: were pushing inland into Sicily from the beach and they
Speaker 1: approached this hut, or at least that's what it looked like,
Speaker 1: that was up on a hillside. Suddenly, though, the hut
Speaker 1: erupted with machine gun fire. It is really a disguised pillbox.
Speaker 1: All the human soldiers at this point hit the ground,
Speaker 1: but Chips broke free and he stormed the hut from
Speaker 1: the rear. Moments later, several Italian soldiers spilled out, with
Speaker 1: Chips kind of going at them. He was supposedly tearing
Speaker 1: at the arms and the throat of one of them,
Speaker 1: and chips handler called him off, but the American side
Speaker 1: took the prisoners, but Chips didn't come through this unharmed himself.
Speaker 1: He had a small scalp wound and powder burns on
Speaker 1: his coat, to which kind of suggested that he had
Speaker 1: been fired at point blank, but he didn't get to
Speaker 1: rest right away. You would think that he would be
Speaker 1: done at this point, but after taking that nest, Chips
Speaker 1: helped his handler capture ten more prisoners later in the day,
Speaker 1: so naturally he celebrated across America. Chips, however, he wasn't
Speaker 1: the most gracious hero. When General Dwight Eisenhower actually tried
Speaker 1: to congratulate him and give him a little pat Chip
Speaker 1: bit him. Well, he is still a dog after all.
Speaker 1: But that behavior didn't keep Chips from getting other honors.
Speaker 1: He was awarded of the Silver Star for valor. He
Speaker 1: got a Purple Heart for his wounds, which ended up
Speaker 1: making him the most decorated dog hero of World War Two.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Chips, or you know, maybe not so much.
Speaker 1: He probably didn't mind getting all those medals are losing them,
Speaker 1: but all of the media attention surrounding his awards attracted
Speaker 1: the attention of the commander of the Order of the
Speaker 1: Purple Heart, who felt that by honoring a dog, they
Speaker 1: were really demeaning all of the men who had been
Speaker 1: awarded a Purple Heart. He complained to President Roosevelt in
Speaker 1: the War Department, and ultimately chips medals were taken away
Speaker 1: and the dog was returned to his family. Like I said,
Speaker 1: Chips probably didn't mind, but it is a little a
Speaker 1: little sad. Yeah, I doubt he was too offended by it,
Speaker 1: and he got to go back to Pleasantville, so I
Speaker 1: didn't have to do that hang out with the general anymore.
Speaker 1: There's actually I found when researching us. There's a nine,
Speaker 1: I think, a Disney film that's called Chips the War Dog,
Speaker 1: and I think it's based on the story. I'm interested
Speaker 1: to know if anyone seen, and I certainly haven't. I
Speaker 1: would have thought that I'd seen every dog movie. Well,
Speaker 1: we were discussing motivational animal movies earlier today Homeward Bound,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to see some movies made on these
Speaker 1: war dogs stories. They're pretty interesting. Maybe not this last
Speaker 1: one though, This last one's kind of a sad one
Speaker 1: on the tear Jerker. So a lot of stories you
Speaker 1: see about war dogs touch on the special bonds that
Speaker 1: developed between the animals and the soldiers, particularly between dogs
Speaker 1: and handlers. They work alongside each other, they sleep alongside
Speaker 1: each other. Some handlers stayed with the same dog from
Speaker 1: training to the battlefront, so it makes sense that they
Speaker 1: would get close. But a great example of the spond
Speaker 1: is the story of an eight five pound German shepherd
Speaker 1: named Bruiser who served in Vietnam. So in September of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, a young marine named John Flannely was
Speaker 1: leading a twelve man patrol with Bruiser twelve miles south
Speaker 1: of Don Long, and when Flannely and Bruiser stepped into
Speaker 1: a clearing, suddenly, bruiser his ears perked up, and then,
Speaker 1: as Flannely put it, quote, the whole clearing seemed to explode.
Speaker 1: They were being fired on from all sides. Seemed everything
Speaker 1: from grenades to mortar rockets hit the clearing, and the
Speaker 1: sergeant yelled to move back, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: Flannelly was hit. His chest was actually ripped open so
Speaker 1: that he could see his own lung, and he tried
Speaker 1: to shoot back, but he couldn't move. It seemed like
Speaker 1: he was a goner. So at that point, thinking that
Speaker 1: he's not going to survive, he tries to save his dog.
Speaker 1: He told Bruiser to leave, to get out of there,
Speaker 1: to get out of danger, but the dog stayed and
Speaker 1: started kind of tugging at his shirt. So Flannely reaches
Speaker 1: up and he grabs Bruiser's harness, and Bruiser is able
Speaker 1: to drag him to a shell crater hole about three
Speaker 1: hundred yards away to kind of protect him, and Bruiser
Speaker 1: took two bullets in the process while he was doing this,
Speaker 1: and Flannely was taken to the nearest mobile Army hospital
Speaker 1: and later he was reunited with Bruiser. In an interview
Speaker 1: with the Tampa Tribune in Flannely recalled this reunion. He
Speaker 1: said a quote, he climbed on the bed talking about Bruiser,
Speaker 1: put his head on my shoulder and licked my face.
Speaker 1: I just held him and cried, what do you say
Speaker 1: to someone who saved your life? So yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: tear jerker. Flannely, whose life had been saved, did finally
Speaker 1: make it home, but no one knows what ultimately happened
Speaker 1: to Bruiser. And this is true for many of the
Speaker 1: thousands of dogs that served in Vietnam. Although a lot
Speaker 1: of the world where two military dogs were successfully returned
Speaker 1: to civilian life, detrained essentially and adopted out, Vietnam war
Speaker 1: dogs were considered equipment and in fact surplus equipment, even
Speaker 1: if they were spoken for by handlers. So when the
Speaker 1: US pulled out, the dogs were left behind. Some of
Speaker 1: them were just left there and abandoned. Some were turned
Speaker 1: over actually to the Vietnamese Army. Some were destroyed and
Speaker 1: I think about a couple hundred I read were returned
Speaker 1: to the US. So kind of a sad ending for
Speaker 1: these dogs. But we don't want to end on a
Speaker 1: sad note. No, we don't not not a notice that
Speaker 1: as that. Um. Fortunately times have changed since the day's
Speaker 1: US war dogs were just left behind a surplus equipment.
Speaker 1: Since the average training costs, I mean, we can look
Speaker 1: at this from a real rational perspective. First, the average
Speaker 1: training costs of these war dogs is about twenty thou
Speaker 1: dollars to forty tho dollars per dog. So while they're
Speaker 1: in service, they're treated very well. You know, they get
Speaker 1: the best care. They're provided with top equipment, bulletproof vests, doggles,
Speaker 1: they're seriously called that. You should look up the picture
Speaker 1: if you want to see dogs looking kind of cool
Speaker 1: with some glass dogs. Yeah, and they do get serious
Speaker 1: veterinary treatment, including I didn't know this psychological treatment if
Speaker 1: the need occur, Yeah, doggy PTSD. I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: that there was such a thing. But after several deployments,
Speaker 1: most dogs get to retire at about eight or nine,
Speaker 1: and then they're adopted out a bill that was passed
Speaker 1: in two thousand allowed for this. After dogs are detrained,
Speaker 1: of course, and many end up with their handlers after
Speaker 1: that natural fit, you'd imagine they'd have the ultimate war
Speaker 1: buddy sort of bond. But some dogs don't just go
Speaker 1: into a life of pure retirement. They are, after all,
Speaker 1: dogs like German shepherds, you know, ones that like to
Speaker 1: have some sort of job or task that they do.
Speaker 1: So some join a police force or work for a
Speaker 1: security agency, and then some really just do kick back.
Speaker 1: I read a quote from one former handler who was
Speaker 1: adopting his dog, and he said, I'm gonna make life
Speaker 1: so easy for him. He's going to be able to
Speaker 1: do whatever he wants and finally relax a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting that more and more people
Speaker 1: are interested in adopting these war dogs now, these retired
Speaker 1: war dogs. Going back to the recent news we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, I think something like four d applications
Speaker 1: were put in for adopting these dogs after the raid
Speaker 1: on Osamavan on his compounds. Well, and I also came
Speaker 1: across information about adopting dogs that weren't war dogs. They
Speaker 1: weren't trained by the U. S. Military. They weren't retiring.
Speaker 1: They were dogs, usually from Afghanistan or Iraq, that were
Speaker 1: strays or abused, and it had been taken in by
Speaker 1: soldiers there and kind of turned into like the mascot
Speaker 1: dogs of today, cared for and ultimately, when the soldiers
Speaker 1: were ready to redeploy or couldn't keep the pets that
Speaker 1: that there were cats involved to couldn't keep the pets
Speaker 1: at the base, there were some organizations that had come
Speaker 1: into existence to taken those animals and help them with
Speaker 1: any veterinary needs, hold them through quarantine, and eventually send
Speaker 1: them to the US to live with the soldiers or
Speaker 1: to join other adoptable families. A couple of them were
Speaker 1: the Soldiers Animal Companions Fund and now Zad I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's how that one is pronounced, but um,
Speaker 1: I just was looking at the little pictures of the
Speaker 1: animals soldiers had adopted, and it was also kind of heartwarming.
Speaker 1: This has been a it's been a heart strings pulling episode,
Speaker 1: hasn't it really has? Um? Well, maybe for some more
Speaker 1: cool or uplifting photos we should post some of those
Speaker 1: photo essays that you sent me earlier of war dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a couple great Rebecca Shaefer war dog galleries
Speaker 1: that went viral on the internet a while back, and
Speaker 1: they have amazing pictures dogs jumping out of planes, dogs
Speaker 1: with these high tech doggles on as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: or just dogs looking like dogs cuddling with soldiers and
Speaker 1: looking cute. But I mean, I really I've enjoyed this,
Speaker 1: and I'd kind of like to hear from listeners about
Speaker 1: other dog war dog suggestions he might have, because I
Speaker 1: know we did stick mostly to World War One, World
Speaker 1: War Two, a little bit of Vietnam, little tutor stuff
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, it was a very US focus, So
Speaker 1: I especially love to know about any international war dogs
Speaker 1: that we didn't learn about. I mean, we mainly focused
Speaker 1: on ones that we could find information on it. If
Speaker 1: there are others out there that you guys love, please
Speaker 1: send them to us where History Podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, or you can look us up on
Speaker 1: Facebook or on Twitter at MS industry And if you
Speaker 1: want to learn a little bit more about war dogs
Speaker 1: are old and war ducks today, how they're trained, all
Speaker 1: of that, we do have an article on the website.
Speaker 1: It's called how War Dogs Work, and you can search
Speaker 1: for it by looking for war Dogs on our home
Speaker 1: page at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
Speaker 1: the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
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