Long before the term “service dog” was even a thing, dogs were already putting their lives on the line in some of the most deadly battlefields in human history. In World War I, a special breed of trained dogs, mercy dogs, or ambulance dogs, did something no soldier, medic, or stretcher-bearer could be counted on to do: they sniffed out the wounded in the dark, crawled through mud and gunfire, and refused to leave the dying alone.
It’s one of the war’s most moving chapters, and most people have never heard of it.
