Dogs of War

The Dog That Cornered Osama Bin Laden,.....not your standard K9. When U.S. President Barack Obama went to Fort Campbell , Kentucky , for a highly publicized, but very private meeting with the commando team that killed Osama bin Laden, only one of the 81 members of the super-secret SEAL DevGru unit was identified by name: Cairo, the war dog.

Cairo , like most canine members of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs, is a Belgian Malinois. The Malinois breed is similar to German shepherds but smaller and more compact, with an adult male weighing in the 30-kilo range.

German shepherds are still used as war dogs by the American military but the lighter, stubbier Malinois is considered better for the tandem parachute jumping and rappelling operations often undertaken by SEAL teams. Labrador retrievers are also favoured by various military organizations around the world.


Like their human counterparts, the dog SEALs are highly trained, highly skilled, highly motivated special ops experts, able to perform extraordinary military missions by SEa, Air and Land (thus the acronym "SEAL"). The dogs carry out a wide range of specialized duties for the military teams to which they are attached: With a sense of smell 40 times greater than a human's, the dogs are trained to detect and identify both explosive material and hostile or hiding humans.

The dogs are twice as fast as a fit human, so anyone trying to escape is not likely to outrun Cairo or his buddies. The dogs, equipped with video cameras, also enter certain danger zones first, allowing their handlers to see what's ahead before humans follow.