Lucca

She was trained as a specialised search dog by the Marine Corps and worked off-lead, ahead of the patrol, finding buried explosives before anybody stepped on them. Over six years and more than four hundred patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, with two handlers, not one Marine was killed by a device while she was working in front of them. On 23 March 2012, clearing a compound in Helmand with Corporal Juan Rodriguez, she found and marked one device. The second went off under her as she moved on. It took her front left leg and burned her chest. Rodriguez put a tourniquet on and stayed with her, and she was on a helicopter within minutes; she was operated on at Camp Leatherneck and was standing on three legs ten days later. She retired to her first handler's family in Maryland and lived another six years — the kind of retirement, as her handler put it, that most of them wanted for her. She was given the Dickin Medal in London in April 2016, the first US Marine Corps dog to receive it, and died in 2018 at twelve.

Loved by · Chris Willingham, Juan Rodriguez

Honours

• 2006–2012More than 400 patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan; no Marine lost to a device while she worked
• 2012Lost her front left leg to a second device in Helmand, 23 March
• 2016Dickin Medal — the first US Marine Corps dog to receive it

Their kind

The military detection cross: shepherd nose and drive with the Malinois's lighter frame and faster recovery, bred for dogs that work in heat under load.

A life in seasons