Dogs are said to be the most loyal to humans, but has that relationship been one-sided? This week we dive into the history of dogs, some of their early jobs before we come to when humans decided to use them in their combat. Dogs in war dates back thousands of years, yet this is barely ever discussed. Join in on the learning of how we humans and canines have been partners in crime since the beginning.

Welcome to this new adventure of a podcast where I get to appease my desire

to be a teacher without having to deal with the restless students.

I'm Levi and this is Remedial Scholar.

You might be asking yourself, Who is this?

Why should I listen to you?

I am by no means an expert, but I am a constant learner.

Mo is reading about random things.

The kinds of facts you get from that one

random friend who seems to have them coming out of his ears at any point.

The friend who you have to ask.

Why do you even know that when they tell you something that's interesting?

That's what I am.

And that's what I hope to do

to bring you in this podcast.

I wanted to create a show dedicated to some of the topics that I feel

are either underrepresented or could be broached in a different way.

With that being said, this is not an accredited course.

That's only me doing the research and I may miss some things

and there's a chance that I may process this information differently

than somebody reading this exact same thing.

So don't let me be the end all.

Be all for your knowledge.

Do your own investigating in discovery.

My hope is that the show inspires you to research

further into these topics because I feel like if you here

you already have a similar feeling towards historical events and topics as I do.

With that, let's get into it.

That's ancient history.

I feel I was denied

credit critically.

I need to know and information.

Information

belongs to them.

Stuff stuck in your head immediately.

Class.

Dogs have been widely considered

the best friends of humans for upwards of 30,000 years.

But how did that relationship start?

Moreover, when did that relationship turn from strangers to utilitarian purposes?

Or has it always been quid pro quo?

Today we will be looking at the bond between Canis Familiars and Homo sapiens

and how we have been using dogs to our strategic advantage

at Vantage as far back as they have been using us.

So everybody get comfy because this will not be history in 30 seconds.

War dogs.

Where did we even come up with the concept of having dogs do our fighting?

And we're going to be

looking at the relationship or

how the relationship moved to that will be starting

with the evolution of dogs

and how they came from wolves snarling at humans in the woods who being the fuzzy

little weirdos and scared themselves when they far too loud.

After that, we'll discuss how they began to be our companions

and how we shifted them from shifted them into a mutually beneficial relationship

and put them to work kind of rent they pay around here anyway.

After that, we move into their roles in early combat,

and then we zoom right on

into the different battles and written accounts of their uses in wars

and how they were utilized before discussing advances in dog training

throughout that timeline.

As we go,

I will be describing how some dog breeds

came to prominence and expanding on those before coming to modern dogs

and the training that they go through to be the best dogs that they can be.

So feel free to take notes.

Don't feel obligated because it's not going to be on the midterm.

So this topic came into my brain the way most topics come to people.

Video games now.

No, no, I don't think that's correct at all.

But my ADHD riddled mind also wanders as I consume different types of media.

And I was playing this series called Total War

The Rome, Rome two specifically in this game,

you get all sorts of different regions, specific troops

and units to utilize in the aggression filled campaigns

to capture the full reaches of the Roman Empire.

Or you can play as some of the smaller empires and fight

the good fight against the Roman war machine.

All of this information is pretty much semi moot,

but in this game you can recruit more dog units consisting of handlers.

And what I can only assume are the version of the Roman Malaysians,

which we will discuss later, using them to break lines, chase fleeing

soldiers or just as an extra defense when your city is attacked.

These are all very similar

to how these dogs would have been used in the ancient war sphere.

We will be discussing this at length after a bit as well.

Does it blow your mind that you can look at a bulldog and think of its ancestors

as battle hardened mastiff types chomping after the occasional Celt?

It makes me think of a scene from the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

where dude has daydreams about killing people with spears and arrows

due to the fact that he is a direct line descendant of Genghis Khan.

So I'm imagining this blank

stare of this bulldog dripping

with spit, having all these flashbacks of this massive dog

chasing down some scrawny hoplite or something like that.

I don't know. There's something there.

But it is interesting that all these toy breeds have a common ancestor.

I think we get lost in the concept of a common ancestor as humans.

But with animals.

But with animals, specifically dogs, it really isn't that far back.

But while we can point to the common ancestor due to archeology

and fossil records, that's only half the story.

We know dogs evolved, evolved from gray wolves

or a common ancestor between the two, and that this process began around

130,000 years ago, was not told as how this happened.

But there are many pretty educated assumptions on this.

The biggest one is that the smell of

freshly cooked food in the hunter gatherer camps drew wolves in,

while the more aggressive wolves would have been chased off.

Understandably so, the more curious and docile ones would have been greeted

with less hostility and even some scraps. Yum!

This process happening over

long periods of time created bonds with these animals and humans

that would expand the different roles for the dogs and so on.

Until around 30,000 years ago when we began to train

and train them domestically into specific breeds.

Now I'm getting ahead of myself.

How do we know that this is the favored method?

Method? Favored method.

All of this interaction occurring.

Replication, baby.

In 1959, Soviet scientists name Dmitri believe

began a study into the document to document the domestication process

and to see how many generations it would take for this process to be noticeable.

Now they use Silver Foxes and now this is not how we got studs

like Pierce Brosnan or George Clooney.

Dmitri is interesting

enough on his own, but this study is really quite wild.

It's wild.

Anyway, after

graduating from the Ivan Agricultural Academy

and then fighting in World War Two,

Dmitri was given a position at the Institute for Fur Breeding Animals,

which is like the most Soviet sounding thing ever.

Congratulations, Dmitri, on fighting Nazi.

Now, you may pursue animal interest at the Institute

for Fur Breeding the Animals in lovely Moscow.

And so Dmitri was inspired by Darwin and the study of domesticated animals

while in the agricultural academy and wanted to understand

what are known as Domestication syndrome traits that he had noticed.

He hypothesized

that humans needed animals with pro-social behaviors to domesticate.

After all, you don't want something that will literally bite the hand that feeds.

His methodology was that by taking the calmest

prosocial animal of a litter and bringing them with other calm,

prosocial animals, you would soon have a domesticated animal.

And he was right.

Currently, there's a domesticated species of silver foxes

residing in an experimental farm

in the near the Institute of Cytology and Genetics and Novosibirsk,

Novosibirsk, Siberia.

That was a tough one.

The descendants of the beginning litters of this study, the foxes there

now have many traits that we associate to with domesticated species of dogs.

Traits like floppy ears, upturned tails, juvenile

facial features like shorter, more rounded noses.

And the most interesting part, in my opinion, is the lighter fur color.

The lack of adrenal output caused by breeding The most docile of these foxes

causes the melanin output to drop and thus made their coats lighter.

Now, all of these things happened within four generations of foxes

because of the study and the work done by

Ludmilla Trut, Dmitri's mentee.

We have a pretty good idea of how this process began, how this process

happened over the course of the years for our furry friends ancestors.

That's a tongue twister I didn't expect to have.

Unsurprisingly, it wouldn't be much longer after these initial interactions

and iterations of early dogs that humans begin to realize their potential.

Some suspect that the early adaptations of the wolves we began to domesticate fell

under the hunting, and protection is more likely that they were used

in hunting as wolves on their own, or obviously very astute hunters.

Some even theorize that early humans used wolves to outlive their competitors.

In some ways, the Neanderthals, as humans, began

to farm, introducing the domestication of other animals such as livestock.

These descendants would be used for herding and guarding

for herding and guardians of said livestock.

These are the ancestors of the shepherd breeds, as we know today.

Other dogs were used for working and pulling,

like the sled dogs, which are suspected to be around 9500 years old.

And now we're coming to the point where dogs are being bred

for specific tasks herding, hunting and most of all, general protection.

The earliest version of these are a type of mastiff, which of course

they are needs some big old hounds to defend livestock from wolves and bears.

In other parts of the world, dogs are seen as near royalty.

It's no secret that the ancient Egyptians mummified their animals

upon the death of their human, even a god at the head of a well.

It wasn't a dog, but it's a dog of Jason animal Anubis.

And this God would escort dogs to the field of reeds,

which was their paradise.

Well, our dogs go to heaven kind of scenario.

As far as the utilitarian purposes of dogs,

their roles have more or less been the same

since the founding foundations of our modern human civilization.

Some bred the

specifics introducing breeds like the Afghan hound or the Saluki.

As the world expanded

to include more and more civilizations with written records of their dogs.

They find Iquitos, greyhounds, mastiffs, Malamute, Chow, chows,

each coming along for specific purposes

or brought to existence because of the certain qualities they possess.

The oldest known civilization brought the oldest known

dog accessories, leashes and collars.

The Sumerians.

That's who I was talking about. That wasn't clear.

Also, were some of the first to bring dogs in to live within their city walls,

which brought urbanism to the canines.

This meant more guard jobs and less herding with within the city.

Guard dogs turn into attack dogs and then come into our topic.

Earlier dogs Sumerians also gave birth

to the written accounts of dogs, including Ishtar and her seven dogs.

Now, while we do not have written accounts of dogs in battle

until around 600 BCE is assumed that this was not the first time.

With that being said, it's time to move on to military dogs and their successors.

And the Kingdom of Lydia

is the first documented account of the use of dogs for war purposes

around 600 B.C., The Samaritans who are different from the Sumerians

we discussed a little bit ago, attacked the Libyans and their King Ali Ortiz,

and he deployed dogs to help defend their city.

The kingdom of Lydia is most known for the

their birth of the golden silver coin minting.

They are the first that we know of to do this.

And we're even so well versed in gold that they had special stones

that they would carry around and scratch suspected pieces of gold.

And if the coin left a yellow streak, it was pure

and whoever you were doing business was worth trusting.

But if there's red or brown, it meant that the person

was not to be trusted and the coin was a fake.

And then the stone would be known as the Lydian Stone.

So they're very into gold

now. The Samaritans

were a pain in the ass for most of Anatolia or Asia minor,

as it were, and they were horseback nomads

who caused chaos around the lands.

And after Ali Ortiz finally beat his attackers,

Lydia became a major, prosperous kingdom following this win.

Now, is this due to the dogs? Maybe.

I mean, it definitely seems like it could be.

The Sumerians were nomadic and thus definitely ruffled feathers

of several kingdoms of Asia minor and essentially a coalition force

had driven the remaining Sumerians out after this point.

This was largely due to the victory of Ali Ortiz.

His dogs are said to have killed some invaders and routed others.

These dogs were used as a fighting force, but some of

but some others have been used as a mental warfare tactic.

In 525 BCE, the battle of Battle of Policia

and between the Egyptian army and the Armenian army

led by Come by, seize the second,

come by, seize released dogs as well as cats and other sacred animals

to which the Egyptian projectile forces would just stop firing

since they held these animals so dear, which is a genius move.

Oh, you love these things. Better not shoot us.

You're going to kill them all.

In 490 BCE, the famous battle

of Marathon was fought and a dog followed his hoplite master into battle.

This dog has been memorialized in many murals about this battle

now in the age of Rome, which was the inspiration

for me to do this episode in the first place.

Dogs had many similar jobs we had mentioned before.

They also bred a dog specific just for war, the mythical Molasses

or Molaison, was used in conjunction with the Legionnaires.

This dog originated in Greece and like many other

fine Greek things, Romans stole this to

the molasses and is thought to be an ancestor of the massive breeds.

So imagine the red Roman shield

like the big square shield right?

And the soldier carrying it looking massive already

with this £200 dog marching with them, just hungry,

angry, ready to kill anything that runs away from them.

They're being used in more versatile ways, such as chasing, chasing,

fleeing soldiers and breaking up formations, disrupting momentum,

as well as just overwhelming troops and following up with cavalry.

Now, the Romans were not the only ones to be using dogs at this time

either, because their primary enemies also use dogs.

Julius Caesar sounds familiar.

Even wrote about the Celtic warriors that were flanked

by their ferocious Irish Wolfhounds.

By 391 A.D., there was this breed of dogs that was already known in Rome.

It was a big deal

because the Roman consul, Quintus Aurelius, received seven of them as a gift

and everyone in Rome was amazed by these things.

And later on these dogs were even used for the entertainment in the Circus Maximus.

As time passed, the Celts were pushed back into Brittany in the British Isles,

and they fought with their gentle giants with them.

These hounds were so valuable that only emperors, kings, no nobility,

poets could own them, and they would be given as cherished gifts.

They even had chains and collars made of precious metal and stones to

decorate them.

Now definitely should be noted

that the majority of the dogs in these military campaigns were century

like they watched over camps, alerted guards of approaching potential threats.

They were not leading every battle.

They certainly weren't the fodder for warriors of the ancient world.

Dogs like horses had to be trained and thus had to have a trainer

paid to train them, which could get expensive.

And for free.

And frivolous spending was for banquets not on battle.

Okay.

However, Roman usage of various dog breeds

did give birth to the military dog market.

They had bred the Malaysian from dogs they found in Greece to be better war

dogs.

Other people were doing the same thing.

And since Rome had essentially created an international road system

in Europe, traveling dog markets were now available.

Even more varieties were birthed and crafted and Roman houses now

had beware of dog signs on on the floor in their mosaic floors in Latin.

And no kidding.

Like literally beware of dog.

A lot of these dogs being bred of fortunately would meet their end in

many of the gladiatorial combat sessions littered throughout the Roman Empire.

This would be echoed in the medieval period

when bathing emerged as a popular pastime.

I guess they thought having dogs try and kill humans was beneath them.

So they had hungry, angry dogs fight bears and bulls or anything

that seemed interesting enough the larger animals would often be chained.

So not really a fight as much as it was a massacre.

No wonder is called the Dark Ages.

This also allegedly tenderize the meat of these animals.

So I guess it's just a really, really violent meal prep.

Unfortunately, this 12th century

sport would pave the way for even more ferocious dogs.

And I have no doubt that some aggressive breeders took

that.

Some aggressive breeders

tried to create the perfect fighting dog for these matches.

These types of things are not even close to as bad as it will get for dogs.

In this story, though, in 1492, if you can finish that rhyme,

you probably know the next bit of this is going to get dark. Yes.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue

and he brought civilized Europe to the Americas.

And subsequently his large attack dogs as well.

He mostly brought them to test unfamiliar food.

He also brought them

he also brought them to terrorize the natives that he now knew lived there.

And much like I mentioned before, these dogs would be chasing,

fleeing natives, often mauling them to death, which,

you know, entertained his men greatly, which good for them.

In the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors brought

their Spanish mastiffs to the Americas

to continue what Columbus had started.

16th Century also brought human tracking dogs to fruition.

Now in the seventh century, jumping back a little bit,

a French monk name Cuba, I'm assuming since these French bred dogs

that would eventually turn into what we know as hounds or scent hounds.

Cuba was deemed a saint later on and he is the patron

saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians and metal workers.

Really Renaissance man.

His is

honored by hunters as being the first ethical hunter.

And once allegedly, it was hunting a stag

that had a floating cross between his and his antlers.

Like, you know, you often do.

And God supposedly talked to him at this moment.

And other versions of the story include the stag directing.

Huber on how to hunt a killing.

Only the eldest stags and holding animals in their higher regard

as they are God's creatures are really pertinent.

But I just kind of found it fascinating.

After this interaction, his interest in animals skyrocketed

and he began to began breeding hounds

specifically the ones with adapted senses of smell.

These hounds have been used for tracking hunting game like boar and deer.

But in the 16th century they began to they began to use them to track runaway

prisoners fleeing warriors and also slaves who sought freedom.

So in those last

200 years, dogs have been used in some of the most nefarious uses today.

And that is sad and unfortunate.

And I think it's also a testament to

what a dog would do for its own trainer.

They don't really see the atrocities or the violence.

They see the objective, they see the reward and they see the punishment.

So those

uses would continue, especially the slave chasing.

Although many negative tests have been given to the dogs,

the next major development with dogs came in the form of guide dogs,

which I didn't even realize was such an old idea.

In the 1750s in a Parisian hospital for the blind

instructors, instructions began to be made for guide dogs to help those in need.

An Austrian man named Joseph Risinger had trained two separate dogs

so well that people thought he was literally faking his blindness.

Another man from Austria founded the Institute for the Training

of the Blind in Vienna, which is not a blind person combat school.

Although I wish it was.

That is when the first manuals began to be produced

to help people train their dogs for blind necessities.

The recommendation

was for poodles and shepherds as the best for this training.

Later in the 18th century, dog sledding became a thing, trekking

across the frozen tundra of northern Canada and Alaska in the indigenous

Inuit of northern Canada had used this like a form of this dog driven sledding.

But the Russians like, really made it a modern tool.

They're the ones who created the formation and had lead dogs

which were given specific commands that would help them drive the pack.

There also a version of sledding that the French Canadian

military used during the Seven Years War.

It was so effective with large loads and in freezing

weather and cheaper than horses, which made it perfect for them.

These dogs would be used to transport many different things,

but mostly male and supplies across the tundra.

And the similarities for dogs transporting in the horn,

like the harshness of winter, are kind of like

compare as to the usefulness of the camel in the desert, right?

Camels super adapted to the

desert can walk for a long time and humans use them.

Their dog's been used in the winter and the tundra for sledding.

The dog sledding was also helped to prevent

a massive epidemic in 1925, a very famous one.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit again.

So let me back up.

Back to the Mormon.

Yeah.

In 1835, British Parliament

finally outlawed the wild practice of baiting.

Hurray!

But this actually turned into a worse thing for the dogs,

specifically because of the dwindling population of bears

and bulls forced their hand with its savage strain of dogfighting.

Just took its place.

Michael Vick wait outside.

Instead of crowds watching dogs tearing the chained

up, animal, spectators now began to bet on dogs

fighting against one another, which is not a good move to the death.

More often than not.

Obviously, dogs have fought before this,

and I could only imagine what like a Roman lost in fighting

an Irish wolfhound would be like in like the Colosseum or something.

But this was the first time it was the entertainment for many

dogfighting spread all over, becoming a major becoming major

in the United States, as well as European and Asian and Latin American countries.

And even though it is legal in most places,

it is legal in parts of Japan as well as Russia,

which doesn't really surprise me that much.

The growth of the the growth of dogfighting gave way

to some newer breeds as well.

Since people were trying to win money however they could.

The American bull terrier descended of the old the old English terrier

or an old English bulldog were bred for their fighting ability.

They would be eventually used in

the Civil War, but they were loved by the dogfighting community and kind of

still are.

These dogs are demonized

like more than any other dog, I think, in modern times anyway.

And it's weird because you can look back at history

and see which dogs were the ones people were scared of the most.

And it's always changed.

So in like this weird backwards breeding, there's

many of these dogs that were bred from the most aggressive of the litter

so that they can be better fighters and whatnot.

And so you have an excess number of dogs with these traits.

And in the aggressiveness bred into them over the years.

Now, personally, I've yet to meet an aggressive one,

but I've heard plenty of stories because people can't see a picture of a,

you know, a pit bull without telling their horror story about

their whole family and stuff.

But in

2000, a study was conducted that found that the pit bull dogs

accounted for 67% of dog bite incidents in the United States

during 1979 and 1998, yet didn't even account

for close to 60% of the population of dogs in the United States.

The study also included Rottweilers, which

which are another dog breed that people began to get because of its

dominating presence and the status they felt that brought them now.

And what seems to have been a response to the events

I just described, the ASPCA or the American Society

for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was founded in 1866.

Henry Burge founded it to advocate for animal abuse legislation originally

aimed at protecting livestock like horses from being abused on the farms.

But expanded it to all animals.

11 years later,

in 1877, the first Westminster Kennel,

the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, a mouthful, was held

at Madison Square Garden, and I have yet to ever watch it

now seem best in show, so that should count for something.

I feel like

now more and more clubs were formed after this,

including the American Kennel Club in 1884,

followed by the United Kennel Club in 1898,

the UK being for profit and the AKC being nonprofit

Back to Dogs at work in 1888, London

Shaken with the gruesome murders of the White Chapel

District, hounds were being used to hunt for Jack the Ripper.

These dogs were just common human trafficking, not human trafficking.

And oh my God, human trafficking hounds.

And they had no other training

to be any more help to their police counterparts in 1899. But

human trafficking dogs still get me.

I'm sorry.

I'm just imagining

those dogs just driving this van of people.

Anyway, sidetracked.

Or back in 1899, police in Belgium began training,

training dogs specifically for police work,

even though dogs had been working with guards and sentries for centuries.

At this point, these dogs were specifically trained in a more

in a much more organized fashion.

This training spread throughout Europe, catching the minds of German

and Austria-Hungary officials, breeding became a focus for their training,

and the search was on for a dog that could fit their

very specific criteria a man named Max von Stephan.

It's assuming it's got that launched, you know,

because it's German anyway, believe that dogs should be bred for working.

And he encountered a dog who was the product of several generations of

of breeding

that fit what he believed to be the perfect working dog.

He purchased his dog immediately after meeting him.

And this dog was the first of the now German Shepherd dog line.

This would also pave the way for pave the way to other dogs

synonymous with working in war, like the Belgian Malinois.

We also have the integration of coach dogs dating back to the 17th century

with dogs like the Dalmatians, which hail from Croatia, which I did not know.

But it makes sense because they kind of run.

The Dalmatians are often associated with firefighters,

so I was curious about that and had to look it up.

The spotted dogs were picked due to their size to accompany

horses on rides while they pulled the coaches.

And like most things in the 17th century,

they were soon a status symbol as well because of their, you know, coats

their spots, make them superstar after.

But they were also work as protection as well.

This is one of the reasons why fire departments use them.

But they also match the pride that the firefighters took in their coaches

and were companion of were one of the top companion dogs

which made training them relatively simple.

In the 1870s, the fire

Department of New York started using them as carriage dogs.

And, you know, like I said earlier, with the with the pride

matching the status dog between fire department, like,

you can still look at fire trucks now and they're always immaculate.

They're always like it seems like they're always car show ready.

I don't know.

Anyway,

but the relationship ended with the motorized car pulling the fire equipment,

but they kind of are still this weird pseudo mascot.

Although I have heard that most fire stations like cats now

because you can leave them unattended for a while and that's kind of

kind of do their thing, you know,

early 20th century followed the late 19th century

fascination with dog clubs by introducing crowd favorite dogs.

The Chihuahua had become a perfect, emblematic version of the toy breed,

and weirdly enough, one of the oldest canine breeds in the Americas

Chihuahuas were popular in South American civilizations

and can be seen in decorations and artifacts of the Aztec.

The Tyche G was the bigger version of the Chihuahua,

and when the Aztecs toppled the Toltec, they adopted their pride into a dog

that kitschy and made a more refined and smaller animal.

And then when the conquistadors conquered the Aztecs, Montezuma

was said to treasure his tiki.

These dogs survived in remote villages,

and then in the 18th and 19th century, Americans were fascinated with the dog,

and they became very popular in the high social circles, the very fancy people.

And I did not know that that the Chihuahua was the favorite dog of two

lost empires.

Morbid fun fact, the Spanish conquistadors eight in a legend, 100,000

of these dogs when they were starving on their expedition.

This helped lead the ticket to extinction

and the descendants ended up being found in the state of Chihuahua.

Hence the name.

And I mean,

if you needed another reason to hate conquistadors, I guess that's it.

Unless you really hate 2 hours.

But I still wouldn't pick the conquistadors

just because they kind of sucked.

But other dogs became very popular

for just companionship and not just working in the United States.

German shepherds and Labradors competed against one another

to become the most popular dog breeds in the country.

Now back to the main topic.

Dogs would be once again called to help their fearless friends

being used in World War One for all sorts of different types of missions,

mostly used for message delivery across the battlefield.

They were also used for pulling cards that held machine guns

as well as supplies,

in some cases more than 2000 dogs were in service on the Western Front,

bouncing across, damaged no man's land and evading artillery to

to deliver might to to to deliver vital messages.

Some dogs were even used to catch rats in the trench to prevent them

from spreading illnesses.

Even pilots use them as companions.

The Red Baron even had a dog named Maurits who flew with them on occasion.

And I kind of like wonder if that's where the Snoopy and the Red Baron

thing comes from.

I'm not for sure, but it's kind of interesting.

Now, one of the most famous of the dogs on the Allied side was Sergeant Stubby.

Sergeant Stubby served with

the 102nd Infantry in France for a year and a half.

In his service. He was hurt with mustard gas.

And then when he would return to his comrades, he knew to alert them

of the gas when it was arriving because he had this, you know,

conditioning about it and saved a bunch of lives in that process.

He also located injured troops in no man's land.

The acute sense of hearing

also allowed him to alert his unit with artillery on the way.

Since it produced this very particular like whining sound,

he he even captured a German spy.

You know, this dog is awesome.

He was eventually smuggled home and lived for eight more years

following the conclusion of the war.

His body is now on display at the Smithsonian.

If you're curious or in the neighborhood

now, in between

World Wars, we have the 1925 mushing of dogs

from Indiana to Nome, which I briefly mentioned earlier.

It's a 674 mile journey across snow covered lands.

20 mushers were used, 150 sled dogs in service,

and every one of them are heroes for preventing diphtheria.

Outbreak in Nome.

The journey took six days, and the dog, Balto, was the most famous of the dogs

since he was the first one to cross the finish line.

Or I guess not finish line, but just get there.

Now. This has led to some contention.

The musher who trained Balto did not think he was lead dog material.

Leonard Seppala did a bulk of the journey with his dog Togo.

Togo as the lead for most of it.

Seppala and Togo covered 365 miles alone,

which had even experienced temperatures of -40 degrees.

Seppala, too, is on a mission, could not see.

But then Togo led him on Togo is underground hero of the event

for doing a bulk of the lead and Balta was the first one to cross the line.

But I think they both obviously deserve a lot of credit and all involved

everybody involved, the dogs included, are heroes.

Now some see the statue of Balto in New York City as shameful

since they didn't give one to Togo.

But I kind of think statues like this are more for the whole entire event

and not just, you know, the face crafted, but not everybody looks at it that way.

Now, with the breaking of World War Two, it would be impossible

to move on without discussing the use of dogs by the Nazi machine.

German shepherds, unfortunately, do their obedient nature.

Dogs were utilized by these maniacs

because they were good at being the dogs that they were bred for.

Also, simultaneously, they had become more popular in the United States

and were used by crime bosses and bootleggers, which made the public,

which made the public real weary of them for a long time.

Which kind of goes back to the thing I was talking about by different

dog breeds becoming different like,

I don't know, targets by the public.

These dogs were used as guard dogs for concentration camps,

but also Hitler took to them like really well.

One notable dog was named Blondie.

This was a favorite of not just Hitler,

but like everybody around him, he had Blondie with him in his bunker.

And even during his last days, he used the dogs loyalty against her.

He had a doctor test, cyanide pills on the dog to which she died.

And weirdly enough, after Eva Braun suicide

workers of the bunker were more sad about Blondie's death, which I guess

kind of surprises me.

But then again, doesn't really, because it's a dog. Did

the allies use dogs

in many different ways, just as they had in World War One?

Since trench warfare was not the norm anymore, they adapted Soviet

troops, trained dogs to run under German tanks while strapped with explosives.

The only problem is that they trained them with Soviet tanks

and that the dogs were just as likely to run under Russian tanks

or towards their Russian counterparts in the heat and confusion of battle.

And this would ultimately lead to Soviet deaths.

The U.S.

used dogs donated by owners to aid the Pacific Theater.

Dogs were used to help take the islands back from the Japanese,

and the Doberman pinscher became the official dog of the United States

Marine Corps, even though they didn't exclusively use this dog breed.

But it still became their mascot.

545 dogs returned with their handlers after their fighting in the Pacific theater.

And World War Two has its own chart.

Sergeant Stubby as well.

Chips, a German shepherd Collie Malamute mix is considered

one of the most decorated animals of any war, having served in the third

Infantry Division, traveling to Africa, Italy, France and Germany

in 1943.

Chips as his handler, Private John Raoul, were pinned down by Italian machine guns.

Chips broke from his handler, Rust the pillbox, and attacked the enemy gunners.

The four man team ran away to flee the attacker and then surrendered.

Chips had one man by the throat and was ordered to release

him, his handler, fearing that he was going to kill the guy.

He received a few wounds, but then later helped capture ten more Italian fighters.

He's given the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and the Purple Heart,

even though those were all like semi revoked after they weren't taken away.

But they basically were like, You can't do that anymore.

They made an official prohibition of commendation of animals.

He was unofficially awarded a theater ribbon with an arrowhead

for assault, landing and battle stars for each of his eight campaigns.

He went on to receive the PDSA ticket medal and the Animals in War

and Peace Medal of Bravery posthumously,

which is a very long medal name.

Civilians were even asked to help the war effort, not just with war

bonds or factory jobs, but there's even a program called Dogs for Defense,

asking pet owners across the United States to donate their pups for military duty.

This was a donation, but I imagine just imagine how crazy

it would be to be a mom who donated her dog to the war

and then her sons all get drafted and then one of them's Matt Damon.

No, but they did donate their dogs and they had requirements for what

they were looking for.

As far as traits go, they asked that dogs were either sex between one

and five years old, physically fit, and had what they call watchdog traits

dog duties in World War two.

Get it?

Dog duties would have held a wide variety of jobs

and were not all four legged of Rambo like chips.

Now Chips was also donation, which is pretty awesome considering

you could have just been chasing squirrels and pooping in a piece.

All the effort should be attributed to the people who trained him

before he shipped out

because this nonmilitary dog showed up on the European front right to kick ass.

And that's that's what he did.

Now, there are 18,000 donated dogs that made up the bulk of the war.

However, 8000 would be denied due to failed exams, which were things

like excitability, near gunfire, disease, poor smell, a poor sense of smell.

They just smelled bad.

So you can't you can't go to war with that. Sorry, buddy.

And then also unsuitable temperament.

There are also around 2000 trained military dogs.

The jobs of these dogs primarily

what we would think of guarding supplies in spaces, carrying messages,

also like rescuing downed pilots, which is pretty cool.

And then there was a return to historical form

in the Korean War for dogs before we reached Korea.

Let's talk a little bit about the military and their focus on training these dogs.

In 1942, during World War two, dogs for defense inspired look,

Lieutenant Colonel Clifford C Smith,

which is no relation that Krylov Clifford the big Red Dog.

But how funny would that be?

Lieutenant Colonel Clifford

spoke with his constituents,

and an experimental program was born under the Quartermaster Corps

of the Inspection Division within the plant Protection Branch

of the government, which is the most bureaucratic world title I've ever heard.

This program would be the

genesis of the dog training in the military.

The Quartermaster Corps didn't just train dogs.

They trained the handlers.

A manual from 1943 gave this instructions

on training, typically lasted 8 to 12 weeks.

First, the dogs got used to military life and a sort of basic training atmosphere.

After that, they moved on to more specialized training, depending on what

their role would be sentry dog scout, dog patrol, dog,

messenger, dog or mind dogs.

The Quartermaster Corps set up a war dog platoons

in the March of 1944 to help out here and the Pacific.

There are 15 platoons at all, with seven serving in Europe

and eight in the Pacific.

Apparently the Japanese didn't dare ambush any patrols.

Live with the war dogs in the Pacific, which talk about a good reputation.

The Quartermaster Corps even

tried to train dogs to find wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

Now, they tested this out in May of 1944,

but it didn't really work out because dogs couldn't tell the difference

between injured soldiers and those that were just from

something which is going to come back around later

that I have a story to tie into.

After World War Two, responsibility for training

military dogs was taken over by the Military Police Corps,

and they started with an initial 30 to breed range of dogs

that they would train but got worked down into seven.

By 1944, that seven included a German shepherds Doberman pinchers, Belgian

sheepdogs, Siberian huskies, farm collies,

Eskimo, Eskimo dogs and Malamute.

Yeah, and those seven make sense to me.

And you're not going to get a lot done with English, Bulldog or Corgi.

Now, Corgis are very

intelligent and started out as a barnyard dog,

herding cattle, catching rodents.

The breed goes back to the 10th century.

Even their uses changed when fenced in pastures became

fenced in pastures demanded longer legged herding dogs,

but they remained popular as just like friends and show dogs.

But I like to pick on them because I have friends who have them,

plus videos of them running really, really, really fast.

Cracked me up.

Anyway, back to it.

The Korean War saw the canine military dogs, similar to what we think of today.

But the real jump, what happened more in Vietnam.

The dogs in Korea still had value,

but with the war only lasting three years, there's only so much that they could do.

There were official scout dog platoons.

However, only one would see the action in Korea.

But the 26 Scout dog platoon would be integral

in the protection of the soldiers deployed there around 1500 dog socks.

And in Korea, which is a steep drop off compared to World War Two,

but the scale of the conflict was different as well.

Despite this, there are some heroic actions worth noting.

Most of the dogs were used on patrols, the nighttime patrols.

These dogs were instrumental in identifying enemy troops

that were hidden by silently signaling to the handlers

One such case was Arlo, a six year old German shepherd

who was assigned to a to a platoon and did what he was trained to do.

Arlo alerted a scent to his handler, Sergeant Jack North,

who then alerted the rest of the group, and they all dropped and held.

Still,

Arlo alerted again, but this

time to the left for movement, the sound of voices and marching ahead.

The help of Arlo, allowing them to navigate around this

enemy troop without incident.

Another excellent pup scout dog York was a remarkable canine

who demonstrated

exceptional success with the 26th Infantry Scout Dog Platoon in Korea.

Throughout his service, York carried out a 148 combat missions

with his final mission taking place the day prior to the signing

of the armistice, which brought an end to the war.

Other events such as dogs, ambushing snipers, breaking enemy lines

and tracking the enemy scent, the AKC

which I mentioned earlier, even described as on their website that the North

Koreans and Chinese yelled over loudspeakers saying,

Yankee tank, take your dog and go home.

I actually looked to find reports of this, but it might just be a rumor,

but it's a pretty funny rumor and it kind of takes the Korean

and Chinese armies to like the Scooby Doo level villain of sadness.

I could have taken the peninsula if it wasn't for you

Pesky Yankees in your damned dogs.

I can't say.

I can't help but think that a part of this animosity

was due to the nature of the local Koreans and the dogs.

The poverty stricken country often relied on dogs for their meat, for their meat.

So encountering dogs that were at the very least fearsome guard

dogs had to play a little bit on their mentality.

It was not all sunshine and rainbows for the canine Warriors.

Dog named Champ would unfortunately step on a landmine while on patrol as you know,

dogs were not yet trained to alert for mines or traps in the Korean War.

Champ died instantly and his handler was severely injured.

There's also another dog that was able to prevent

a disaster despite not being trained to find these explosives.

Happy was on a nighttime patrol

and stopped in its tracks and refused to move forward.

The platoon leader was frustrated and decided to push on, moving past

happily, moving past happy and immediately stepping on a landmine

which killed him and unfortunately happy as well.

The 26 provided support to every division

and even supported you when you units.

The members of the 26 were awarded three Silver Stars, six Bronze Stars for Valor,

35 Bronze Stars for meritorious Service and far too many Purple Hearts.

The dogs did not receive the awards due to that directive

after tips which I had mentioned earlier.

But the evolution of combat happening.

Dogs were trained to sense things like bombs and traps by the time

Vietnam occurred and they would be ready with a different climate and terrain

came new challenges for the military dogs during the Vietnam conflict.

This one is marred by so much controversy.

So I'll be focusing strictly on the dogs again here because

Vietnam is just a mess.

Learning from their mistakes.

In Korea, the US military began to train their dogs

on detecting explosives and traps, estimated a number of saved lives.

But these advances in training are reported to be near 10,000 service

members, closely matching the number of dog handlers involved in the conflict

around 5000 canines served in Vietnam, possibly more

as the Army didn't really retain complete records before 1968.

At the close to 60,000 deaths in Vietnam.

For the unit for the United States military, less than 300 of

those were handlers.

Around 232 dogs were killed in action.

Of the 294 handlers who were killed in Vietnam,

one of them, Staff Sergeant Robert W Hart's dog from the 44th is IPI.

SD received the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for extraordinary

heroism and bravery in defending against an attack

and defending against a cyber attack on the down Dao Tang Base Camp.

And in Vietnam, obviously the Marines and the Army began

the inter-service training of canines to train scout dogs marked the first time

since the since World War Two that Marines would use scout dogs.

Now, this is kind of cool.

They trained at a camp named Camp Kaiser,

which is named after the first Marine Scout dog killed in Vietnam.

And this is kind of tying in to one of the things that I've noticed

in the research of military canine handlers and just the units in general,

like they're always a very tight knit group.

Like, I know the military is obviously supposed to be like that in general.

And that was kind of evident during my time.

But like, I have a friend who works as a handler and they just always seem

to be very ingrained in the Brotherhood lifestyle handlers connections. Like

even even since he's out, like they all just seem very, very close.

Still,

dogs in Vietnam caused so much annoyance to the enemy troops.

Their bounties amounting to $20,000 were placed for their capture.

The most famous of the canines in Vietnam was Nemo.

Emma Roberts.

Romberg and his trusty German Shepherd Nimo served together

during the Vietnam War.

While maneuvers, Nimmo detected an approach of Vietcong guerrillas

and alerted through AMBERG, allowing them both to prepare for the impending attack.

Despite being wounded in the ensuing confrontation, Nemo's quick

thinking and bravery kept the enemy at bay long enough for throne bird

to call reinforcements when the rescues went.

When the rescuers arrived, they found thrown Berg unconscious.

But with Nemo standing guard over him, refusing to let anyone approach.

Eventually, with the help of a veterinarian,

Nemo calmed down so the thrown bird could receive medical attention.

It's a good boy

for his crew, for his courage, Stromberg was awarded

both the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with Valor.

After retiring, Nemo was one of the first dogs

permitted to return to the United States after serving in Vietnam.

That list is now.

This leads to one of the more depressing

aspects of the United States military in handling their canines.

Dog lovers.

You've been warned.

A sad truth that the dogs who served in Vietnam

got a pretty rough deal in the end, no pun intended.

Even in Korea, there's like a similar fate that happened in Korea.

Soldiers were given

roughly 3 hours notice that the dogs would not be coming home with them.

No. I wonder if maybe there were more aware of this by the time Vietnam arrived.

You'd think after all they did for the soldiers there,

they'd get some kind of reward, or at least, you know, a nice retirement.

But nope, nope.

The military just saw them as equipment

and got rid of them in the cheapest way possible.

They believe it as most of the dogs in units

were being deactivated in the early seventies.

The dogs were given either to the South Vietnamese army

who didn't even really want them or just put down.

It's kind of just a disgrace and the way that it was handled

to treat such brave and loyal animals this way.

Barely 200 dogs are sort Vietnam made it back to the United States.

That's, you know, roughly 5000 that were there estimated.

Now, this kind of leads into the final topic,

our final chapter this topic, the modern inclusion

of the dogs in the military

in 2000, which is a lovely length of time to get this issue fixed.

Robbie's law was implemented to allow the military working dogs

to be adopted by public agencies or former handlers.

My friend that I mentioned

before actually received a dog this way, which I think is awesome.

But the sad truth is that prior to the signing of this law,

most if not all canines in the military groups

could be seen as equipment and disposed of following service.

The fact that the

reported expenses to train one of these dogs is so high

while to me that they just got rid of them after their service

for a general working dog, it could be 20 to $40000.

Specially trained dogs can cost up to $150,000.

When it's all said and done.

Robby's law did not change the designation, but in 2015 they did.

Finally make it make the change.

And I think it's kind of symptomatic of the respect finally being given

to both the dogs and the handlers as well by the general public

with random skirmishes, including Desert Storm,

in between the conflict in the Middle East following

911 and Vietnam, a lot of the focus was taken to ensure

dogs would be able to be the most effective that they could be.

Dogs had been trained in both detection in the search

for different things, for security such as narcotics

and other things of that nature, but more explosives in a more wide scope.

This was particularly useful in Afghanistan and Iraq,

with roadside bombs and different types of traps

that could otherwise harm people on either side of the conflict.

Military working dogs had been attached to Ranger and SEAL units

going on air missions.

Most famous of recent years was the use of a dog named CONAN

that ended up on a raid that resulted in the death of a member

of the terrorist organization ISIS.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Baghdadi, another dog, was with the SEALs

during Operation Neptune Spear, The raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed.

That dog's name is Cairo.

Both of these dogs are Belgian mammals,

and those are the dogs that look like the scrawny or cracked out

version, the German shepherd, because they kind of are

Remember when I was discussing the Belgian sheepdogs

being introduced in the newly formed army canine Corps during World War Two,

they have a few variants, one of them being the Manuel.

And Manuel is a French adjective, describing something

coming from the Magellan or Milanese

in French, which is a city in Belgium.

So these dogs are the most Belgian,

a dog can be, apparently.

Anyway,

with that we have reached the end of the military working

dog history and have arrived at the present.

But I want to talk about the nonmilitary dogs for a moment.

The civilian cousins of the military, working dogs

making strides in the way that they care for veterans and civilians alike.

As I mentioned before, service

dog training goes all the way back to the 18th century,

and by the 1920s, a focus on guide dogs

being able to navigate cities with their owner was pretty normal.

Training centers began to pop up all around the globe.

Dogs began to be looked at as more than just guides.

We now have dogs that can assist in

with epilepsy, PTSD, anxiety and other challenges as well.

I'm sure we've all seen those videos of the dogs like rolling their owners

or moving their head

moving under their head while they practice a seizure to prevent bodily harm.

It's all very, very impressive and crazy to think that over 100 years ago

they were just considered tools of war or just status symbols.

Now, one of the biggest nonmilitary things

I think of with trained dogs is search and rescue.

Of course, you see dogs being used when there's like a missing person

on the news or some type of natural disaster like Katrina.

But I always think of the stories of search dogs being used in aftermath of 911

when some dogs needed to find fake targets just to prevent the dog from being too

stressed out from not finding any bodies, which is sad as shit.

All right, so let's wrap it up here.

Review some of the things we learn today.

While that a random thought

while playing this video game has led to an hour long podcast,

I hope everyone listening walks away with learning something.

And that is the goal for every episode of this new show.

Some of the things that I found interesting today were the experiment

replicated the dogs domestication from wolves done by the Soviets

with the gray foxes or the Silver Foxes that I talked about earlier.

The fact that the ancestors of Chihuahuas were highly regarded

in some indigenous cultures in Central and South America

until being eaten to extinction by the Spanish.

So another reason to hate those expeditions

the awards given to the United States military dogs

stopped after tipped received several high honors in World War Two.

And I did not mention this in the main storyline,

but the tradition of police and military dogs

being a rank higher than their handler to establish respect and also prevent,

mistreat mistreatment of the animals is kind of cool,

but it should also be mentioned that the dogs learned

much better with positive reinforcement and a reward system.

So mistreatment is a rare occurrence at the professional level.

I think the main takeaway is that that

most people, even dog people like me,

get so jaded to dogs being everywhere

and everything that you don't really stop to think about how they got there

and how many different decisions led to the dogs you have.

This leads me to my last thought about this particular episode,

but I did not obviously bring up every single

dog breed because there's no way that I could do that.

There's so many specific little dog breeds and not enough time.

So I tried to keep it focused on dog

surrounding the military and some service dogs as well.

So hopefully that kept it interesting and not overloaded with information.

Now some final thoughts or just more of a rant will be heard in the last segment.

I like to call remedial rants.

All right.

The first remedial rant of this podcast.

I want to talk about a couple of things that I think largely get swept up

when talking about dogs of war, working dogs or just dogs in general.

The first thing is the alpha that so many of these tough guys

love to latch on to as a thing that they feel describes them.

The origin is actually kind of amusing since it has been recanted

by the man who coined the term for animal behavior.

L Dev L David Mac did a study on what behavior

and is the reason we have the term alpha as he characterized this phenomenon.

But when he tried to but when he tried to replicate it,

he found that what he was really just seeing

was the parents of the pack and that it was not a defining trait.

So it really was just the mother and father of these younger

but not quite baby wolves that he saw before, which is pretty funny considering

most of these so-called alpha burros don't want children or raise a family.

The other

part of this rant centers around the sensitive topic, but I think highlights

the misunderstanding of how working dogs can be, you know, that

be utilized by the general public.

Around the time of the Uvalde school shooting,

I was working with this gentleman who was in his sixties maybe,

and we had finished Stop the Bleeding training that was directed that we take

since there was an uptick in workplace shootings, which is obviously super fun

that that's happening.

Not scary at all.

But the instructors were two sheriffs of the local county.

At the end, there was this Q&A where someone asked about school shootings

and the conversation went to this older gentleman that I mentioned before,

asking why training dogs to smell bad guys wasn't the answer.

He said he wanted a dog in every classroom in the country to smell bad guys coming.

And I thought this was silly already.

But, you know, then I asked a buddy of mine, the one who I mentioned,

who trains dogs, and he told me all of the reasoning why

this wouldn't work, most notably because, dogs cannot smell bad guys.

They can't smell intent, but also because of how expensive it would be.

All right.

So there's 130 some thousand K through 12 schools in America

and the average of rooms in a school based on the average number of students,

that is at a public school, which is 500 ish,

meaning you need about 20 to classrooms per school, maybe more.

We'll do that as a baseline.

That's $1.5 million and train dogs at one school.

And since the average

cost, you know, the average cost of a fully trained

canine is about $50,000 for this kind of thing.

If you know basic math, you then multiply

1.5 million by 130,000 and you'll begin to see another problem

in the idea of a dog in every classroom, $195 billion problem,

not to mention paying the handlers the food for the dog.

And then you have to worry about the kids

reacting to the dog, causing the dog to be stressed when

because you've seen the working dogs with the vets that say do not pet.

And now you're going to put those

in the classroom full of kids who will want to attach it immediately.

You know, and I don't have any solutions for the school shooting epidemic

our country seems to have.

But that idea that the dude presented just

and then he got mad at me for

telling that it was dumb is just that is dumb.

So anyway, that's it for remedial rant section.

And that's it for this week.

Next week I'm going to be discussing the pirates.

How in the world did Pittsburgh ever win a pennant?

No, not those pirates.

The Swashbucklers.

They are, matey.

The SpongeBob painting.

You know, pirates are going to be doing a history of the earliest

account of pirates as well as the over glamorized Caribbean pirates,

and also some different things that I found super interesting.

But until then, you know,

if you have a topic, a historical topic that you'd like me to,

uh, you'd like to hear me talk about,

email me at remedial Scholar at gmail.com.

Well, added to the list also, you know,

leave a review wherever you can, which helps others find the show.

Also, listen to my

other podcast, West of Nowhere.

That's going to be I'm going to have a link tree in the description

and you'll be able to follow that and take it All of the things and.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you all for supporting me.

Thank you all for listening.

Taking the time out of your day and you have a good week.