Dogs For Defense World War Two
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Dogs For Defence July 16, 1942
Importance of these dogs
http://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/war-dogs-tales-of-ca nine-heroism/ Starting in 1942, the United States army decided to start a Dogs for defence program. Dog owners across the country were encouraged to donate their dog to the war in order to keep our country protected. Dogs of war had positive effects during world war two because they patrolled important places, sent messages and were trained to be scouts.
Patrol Dogs
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https://www.uscg.mil/history/uscghist/Beach_Patrol_Photo_Index.asp
One reason dogs for defence was so helpful is that they acted as sentries on important places like borders and beaches to prevent sabotages from attacking countries. The importance of this was that the dogs could alert the soldiers if there was an invading country coming into America. For example, the US was getting suspicious of german and Japanese submarines landing on the beaches, so with the dog's’ keen senses, they were used to patrol these areas to protect areas along the coastline.
Scout dogs
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https://miepvonsydow.wordpress.com/tag/war-dogs/
As scouts, dogs for defense had many issues. The idea was that they would be able to identify Japanese soldiers and kill them without handlers. The dogs were able to point out enemies, but couldn’t kill them without handlers. Despite the failure, the dogs became much more aggressive when they were being trained to do this by themselves, they were shocked and whipped because no other training methods were working. Because of this failure, they went back to what they were doing and would only attack on command from their handlers. Even though these dogs couldn’t fight by themselves, they were still an important part of the war. “Despite these measures to maximize the aggressiveness of the dogs, they continued to perform poorly.” https://armyhistory.org/the-dogs-of-war-the-u-s-armys-use-of-canines-in-wwii/ This is a quote that proves dogs were unsuccessful fighters without a trainer with them.
Messenger Dogs
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https://ww2gravestone.com/dogs-at-world-war-2/
These specially trained dogs could also be used to send messages. This was done on a much smaller scale than the other special tactics they were trained for. This is because messages could be sent by anybody and they didn’t need to use trained dogs to do this. Though they didn’t use messenger dogs much, there were times they were very valuable to the army. “The messenger dogs fared just as well. They were observed delivering messages over rough terrain and in short amounts of time over distances of 600 to 1,000 yards.”https://armyhistory.org/the-dogs-of-war-the-u-s-armys-use-of-canines-in-wwii/ This shows that they could send messages in extreme terrain and wouldn’t risk the lives of any soldiers.
Conclusion In conclusion, dogs for defense was an important part of World War Two. This is because they were great scouts, sentries and messengers who helped the Americans win the war. There were many other things that dogs did for america during the war but these were some important jobs they performed.