In their history, dogs have been often employed by the Armies. The first peoples to employ them were the Assyrians followed by Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

In the early 20^th century a lot of European Armies started to employ dogs not only in combat situations but also for different tasks; Russians for example, in the conflict against Japan, employed dogs in the medical field while Bulgarians and Italians as "sentinel" dogs in Balkans and Tripoli. In the First World War also Germans, French soldiers and Belgians used dogs for example to send orders or for medical assistance.

In the Second World War the United States launched a program to train war dogs: about 20,000 dogs were enlisted and 2,000 sent to the combat fronts. The best results were during the conflict against Japanese in the jungle where the darkness and the greenery permitted to take by surprise the American units; in that context the dogs worked as sentinels intercepting the enemy before the soldiers.