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Sgt. Sabrina Curtis and her military working dog Jessy participate in a three-week pre-deployment training course at Yuma Proving Ground, a Marine base in
Arizona, earlier this year. (Photo courtesy of Rebecca Frankel)
Superhero Canines
By Leah Barkoukis
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these reasons, one might say these canines are the James Bonds
of the dog world.
Beneath the high-tech equipment, however, the traits and
capabilities of the military working dogs are what make them so
priceless. War dogs are chosen for their athleticism, trainability,
loyalty, courage, intelligence, aggressiveness, adaptability
to climactic variations and, not least of which, their noses.
According to the Lackland Air Force Base website, the olfactory
capabilities in explosive detector dogs are so heightened that in
special tests they could detect odor concentrations as small as
one to two parts per billion and, in many other tests, in amounts
too small to measure. The Department of Defense harnessed
this capability, adding single purpose dogs (typically Labrador
retrievers) to their literal and figurative arsenal of weapons to
combat the growing problem of IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan
in the war on terror. German shepherds, Dutch shepherds and
Belgian Malinois are also utilized for dual-purpose detection
and patrol work.
Theyre [MWDs] kind of the first line of defense. They go
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