One of the best Military Working Dog articles I’ve seen is in the Marine Corps Times today, and this one’s about a very specific subset of MWDs – Labrador Retrievers who are trained to work off leash as Improvised Explosive Device Detector Dogs.

“Dogs becoming essential in fight against IEDs”

Doesn’t pull any punches in describing how dangerous a job this is or how tough life can be for these dogs, but also gives you a real look at how much their handlers love the dogs and the relationship they have.

I know there are people who have real qualms about dogs doing these jobs (hey, it even gets to me sometimes), and I also think a number of people have a misperception about how the vast majority of handlers treat them, thanks to some bad stories about a few of the proverbial bad apples in the press.

But if you’ve met any military or police handlers – and I’ve met a number over the years – you know that by far most of them would take a bullet for their dogs.  In this case specifically, you can bet that they will use the dogs as trained, but also do absolutely everything they can to keep them from getting blown up in the process.

The one sentence in the story that did surprise me was this  – of course, I knew the dogs were out there, but had no idea their presence was this widespread:

“For the first time this year, most infantry battalions deploying to war zones have the dogs…”

Make no mistake – that doesn’t tell you how expendable the dogs are, but exactly the opposite – they’ve become so important, it’s gotten to where the Marine Corps doesn’t want to put Marines in the field without them.