Be sure to get a good bath the night before and wake up early to try on five outfits and reject them all because it’s Picture Day at the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, which means a new round of official portraits for military working dogs.
Officials with the 380th wing at Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates, released the official portraits of four of its military working dogs — Neptune, Zorro, Ttommaso and Cory — along with a backstage video shoot with the dog’s handlers.
All appear to be very good dogs.
The wing’s Facebook indicates that the dogs are deployed to the 380th from units at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, Moody AFB, Georgia and Tyndall AFB, Florida.The dogs, the wing said in a release, “along with their handlers, are a highly trained team in all aspects of canine law enforcement, including detecting drugs and explosives.”
Though officials did not specify the breeds of the four dogs, most working dogs across the U.S. military are at least part-German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois, a loyal, highly-trainable working breed that resembles German Shepherds but are smaller.
Regardless of branch, all U.S. military working dogs begin their careers at the 120-day Military Working Dog Training Program at the 341st Training Squadron at Joint Base-San Antonio, Texas, which has been training dogs since the 1950s. Most dogs that graduate sniff out explosives or detect drugs.
Working dogs are nearly everywhere in the modern U.S. military, from Coast Guard drug enforcement to routine base security to special operations raids in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The 380th wing is one of five flying wings that make up Air Force Central, the air component of U.S. Central Command. The 380th flies air-to-air refueling tankers and the MQ-9 Reaper.
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