Dogs have been fighting against terrorists at frontiers, airport check-ins, customs and narcotics posts, docks and shipyards, and railway stations for decades. These amazing sentries work tirelessly to uphold the free world’s ideals and promote peace.
Bred for loyalty, trained for combat
Trained dogs have been long been braving the militants. Coupled with their inherent courage and ballistic body armour, the dogs can survive shrapnel and gunfire. Dogs have proved far better than people or machines at quickly finding bombs.
The lineage runs back further than any war on terror. Germany alone had roughly 6,000 trained dogs by the start of World War I and used an estimated 30,000 over the course of the war, mostly as messengers and ambulance dogs, out of about 50,000 dogs fielded by all combatants combined, of which some 7,000 died in service. Sergeant Stubby, a stray Boston-Terrier mix who served with the US 26th Infantry in the trenches of France, remains the most decorated dog of that war; Chips, a German-Shepherd mix who attacked an enemy machine-gun nest in Sicily, holds the same title for World War II. The job has shifted since then, from finding wounded soldiers to finding hidden explosives and hunting armed men, but it is the same instinct doing the work.
Cairo, the Dog who helped the US army to capture Osama Bin Laden
The aftershocks of Abbottabad haven’t yet subsided. It was quite a stir that the stealth mission stimulated around the globe. However, neither the celebration recognizing the drawing of final curtains on the face of terror nor the controversy simmering over the alienation of Pakistan from the cohort operation has quite faded.
Amidst all the media brouhaha, there remains our good old friend, the dog who helped Navy Seals in the operation! Well, he is not quite in obscurity anymore. Here’s saluting our comrade for the gutsy galore!
During the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, US navy Seals special forces had with them a dog named Cairo, who had undergone the canine equivalent of special services training. He wore a Kevlar vest with harnesses for repelling and parachuting, and a night-vision camera with an 180-degree field of vision.
The dog who nabbed ISIS chief
The hero dog was wounded in the operation to take down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, the terrorist organization.
The trained pooches attack anyone carrying a weapon and are now a pivotal part of special operations as they crawl unnoticed into tunnels or rooms to hunt for enemy combatants. The cameras on their heads beam live TV pictures back to the troops, providing them with critical information and warning of ambushes.
Closer home in India, the CRPF’s Dog Breeding and Training School has grown into a serious operation of its own: over 1,400 K9 teams trained as of March 2026, deployed everywhere from anti-Naxal “find and fix” operations in dense forests to narcotics detection. Haryana’s own K9 unit logged 28 drug-related FIRs in the first quarter of 2025 alone, with dogs posted in every district, and CRPF’s K9 Baisha won gold in narcotics detection at the 2025 All India Police Duty Meet.
Farther from home, a different dog has been doing the same kind of work in a different kind of conflict. Patron, the Ukrainian mine-sniffing dog, has spent three years clearing Russian landmines from Chernihiv’s roads and schoolyards, the same instinct these Naxal-hunting dogs use, just pointed at buried explosives instead of hidden fighters.
See Also: Why no Nobel Peace Prize for Zanjeer, the dog?
Diesel: the French police dog killed in the 2015 Paris attacks
In the recent Paris terrorist attacks, French police dog Diesel lost his life at the Saint-Denis siege after a brave act.
It is understood the dog was the first to be sent into the apartment where three terrorists were believed to be hiding out. Unconfirmed reports suggested Diesel was killed when a female suicide bomber activated her explosive vest.
Diesel wasn’t an isolated tragedy. Officer Down Memorial Page data counts 405 US police K9 deaths in the line of duty between 2000 and 2023, and heat exhaustion, not gunfire, is the single biggest killer of working police dogs. Military working dogs fare worse under fire: in a study of canine casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan, 59% of the dogs examined were killed in action, with gunshot wounds and explosions the two leading causes of death.
Saddam Hussein’s capture, and India’s own 26/11 dog squad
And it isn’t all; dogs have always played a pivotal paw in many of such military operations. The operation that led to the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain was also aided by the canine support.
Personally, I detest having animals involved in the imbroglio but given the state of the world, we can’t trust humans to ward off terror. After their service is done, most dogs are available for adoption. Loyalty is a quintessential canine trait! Goes on to establish (all over again) that dogs are comrades’ best friends too!
That loyalty cuts both ways. A February 2026 US Department of Defense inspector general report found ageing, understaffed kennels had exposed working dogs to mould and extreme heat, contributing to four deaths between 2021 and 2023, proof that wearing a uniform doesn’t guarantee good care. That same month, Fort Meade retired Nick, “Doggles” to his handlers, a 9-year-old German Shepherd closing out his career with the Military Working Dog Detachment. Most working dogs, terror-fighters included, end their service exactly where this blog spends its time: helping find them a home.
“Loyalty is a quintessential canine trait!” I couldn’t agree more.
Lovely post!
Thanks Deboshree:) Nice to have you back!
This couldn’t have been a better tribute for those wonderful marvels who have been and unconditionally continue to be at our sides, irrespective of the magnitude of adversity that they come face to face – more often, the kind that we deliberately intend them to face so that we remain protected, well behind the lines of risk!
Thanks for the kind words, Rakesh!
Awesome post!!
And very true…“Loyalty is a quintessential canine trait!”
Great pictures of outstanding dogs!
Hey..hell of a write. Adore your K9 inclination. Just another minor add on, dogs are the best explosive detection ‘mechanism’ available with a success rate of 96 %. 30 % over the next credible source of detection.
Thanks Ravi!
Its an interesting insight that you have provided- steering over technology,the sensitivity of canine nostrils is simply amazing!
Given the ardent dog lover that you are, here’s requesting you for a guest post sometime next year:)
What i actually feel n belive is we humans are on earth to save the animals, but after learning this fact that we the humans rely upon the animals in most of the ways..I really wish the Almighty must change the natural thought of humans “pity for animals” to “love & respect for animals”. I wish the rest of humans get awakened by the civic sense of not abusing the animals specially the stray dogs,as they suffer a lot.