Thursday, February 06, 2014

Taliban Says It Has Captured a U.S. Military Dog



On Feb. 5, a Twitter account often used to disseminate Taliban propaganda posted a link to the above video of a confused Belgian Mainois "sniffer dog" wearing a vest.

The dog is said to be a U.S. military animal that was seized, along with some small weapons, in December of 2013 in Afghanistan's Laghman Province.

It is unclear what has happened to the dog, but if the Taliban is looking to make points they might follow the track of George Washington who, during the U.S. Revolution, came across General William Howe's white foxing terrier.

As this blog noted back in 2004:

A true dog-man, who missed his own fox hounds and terriers at Mount Vernon, Washington personally wiped the little terrier clean and brushed its coat. He then dictated a short note to his aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, and secretly tucked a private note of his own tight under the collar of the dog. The dog, and both notes, were then returned to General Howe under a flag of truce.

Washington's private note has not survived, but Howe was extremely pleased by it. The public note, a copy of which has survived (see picture below), reads: "General Washington's compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe."

After his terrier's return Howe praised Washington's actions as an "honorable act" and historians note that although he continued to win his battles, he never pursued Washington with quite the same vigor.
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