On March 13, 1942, the Quartermaster Corps (QMC) of the United
States Army began training dogs for the newly established War
Dog Program, or “K-9 Corps.”
Well over a million dogs served on both sides during World War
I, carrying messages along the complex network of trenches and providing some measure of psychological comfort to the soldiers.
The most famous dog to emerge from the war was Rin Tin Tin, an abandoned puppy of German war dogs found in France in 1918
and taken to the United States, where he made his film debut in
the 1922 silent film The Man from Hell’s River. As the first bona
fide animal movie star, Rin Tin Tin made the little-known German Shepherd breed famous across the country.
Rin Tin Tin (1918 – 1932)
