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Out in front of America’s troops, combat canines and their handlers lead the way onto the most dangerous battlefields on Earth. This is what a dog handler tries not to dwell on: the risk associated with the need to find bombs and with the possibility of missing one. At the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military had a force of roughly 2,500 military working dogs (MWDs). Some have entered our national lexicon as heroes in their own right

"I hear a hiss and a rattle, and I look down and there's a snake," Maya recently told CNN affiliate KTSM in Hueco Tanks, Texas. The snake was curled up and ready to strike, but that's when Maya's dog, Psycho, leapt into action. .... A guide dog in training was credited for saving two people from an out-of-control car in San Rafael, California. .... Rick Chap was having a heart attack last year when his cat, Buddy, alerted his wife that something was wrong.

She was a 3-year-old golden-haired beauty when she got the call to respond to her first disaster. Now, stiffer, slower and a bit gray, 13-year-old Bretagne is one of just a handful of World Trade Center rescue dogs still alive. "We arrived on 9/12 and started working right away," said Bretagne's handler, Denise Corliss, a search-and-rescue volunteer with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Bretagne had spent more than a year learning how to find survivors in concrete rubble, but her Cypress, Texas, training site was nothing like Ground Zero. She clambered up ladders to get on top of the huge...

War Dogs The Army Quartermaster Corps began the U.S. Armed Forces first war dog training during WWII. By 1945 they had trained almost 10,000 war dogs for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Fifteen War Dog platoons served overseas in World War II. Seven saw service in Europe and eight in the Pacific. In 1951 the responsibility for training military dogs was given to the Military Police Corps. Dogs continued to serve the armed forces with distinction in Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq and many recent contingency operations. WE FEARED NONE My eyes have seen...