At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States was the only major military power without a dog army. In an interview with Roland Kilbon, for his column Popular Dogs, Alene Erlanger, founder of Dogs for Defense, stated: “The dog game must play its part in this thing. . . Other countries have used dogs in their Armies for years and ours has not. We’ve got to do it. Just think what dogs can do guarding forts, munition plants, and other such places.”[4] Enlisting the help of other prominent figures in the dog world, Erlanger founded the Dogs for Defense organization in 1942. On March 13 of that year, the Army authorized the training of 200 sentries to be donated to Dogs for Defense. It would be the first time that war dogs were recognized by the United States military.[5] The organization was met with overwhelming support from citizens. Armed with their filled-in questionnaires, they were ready to donate their animals and to serve their duty to the war effort.[6] Overall, the American public donated over 20,000 dogs to Dogs for Defense, roughly half of which served in the US military during World War II.
At the end of the war, dogs were reunited with their owners or adopted by the handlers they had served. Some dogs, however, had no loving homes. Instead, Dogs of Defense assumed responsibility for the surplus of military dogs. The organization justified their actions by stating: “To say that a dog should be kept confined to a kennel, robbed of the pleasure of companionship only to be found in a home, seemed to us just like arguing that the soldier for whom no job is in sight should be kept in uniform indefinitely.”[7] To prepare for their new homes, dogs went through a detraining process, which took nearly eight weeks. Dogs learned through a multitude of pets and scratches that they were no longer a one-person dog. They were reacclimated to the sights and sounds of busy city life. Trainers stressed the importance of erasing a dog’s aggression toward unfamiliar strangers. A bark or even a small growl were acceptable, but snarling and snapping were forbidden. Once dogs were fit for civilian society, the call went out that they were seeking good homes.