Science fiction is full of stories featuring military robots with the attributes of certain animals, and the dog is probably one of the most represented in this literature. It must be said that dogs have accompanied soldiers since time immemorial. Already, during the Roman campaigns of antiquity, the famous Canis Pugnax, a breed close to today's Cane Corso, accompanied the troops of Marcus Aurelius in Germany and terrified the adversaries. The arrival of motorized technology in armies, although it eliminated horses, mules and oxen from military inventories, did not make the dog disappear from the battlefield.
Several dogs became famous for their commitment to combat, such as the Bull Terrier “Sergeant Stubby”, who in 1917 accompanied his owner, Corporal James Conroy, from his American training center to the French trenches, and participated in 17 battles, was wounded by a German grenade, and even captured a German spy. But the use of dogs in combat was not always so glorious. Russian forces, during the Great Patriotic War, trained numerous dogs to rush under tanks to find their food. Once at the front, the dogs were equipped with a mine which exploded under the tank, destroying the armored vehicle and killing the animal. Today, dogs continue to accompany the military in combat, mainly to detect, using their scent, explosives or caches of weapons or ammunition, and to help secure sensitive sites, such as military bases.
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