In summary: Smoky was a 4-pound Yorkshire Terrier found in an abandoned foxhole in the New Guinea jungle in 1944 and adopted by Corporal Bill Wynne. She served through 12 combat missions, ran communication wire through a narrow pipe that saved an estimated 250 men and 40 planes days of digging, and is widely regarded…
In summary: Popeye is a Los Angeles shelter rescue — a mix of six breeds including Shih Tzu, Poodle, Pomeranian, Maltese, Chihuahua, and Rat Terrier — whose owner, Ivy Diep, began taking him to restaurants to ease his separation anxiety. His calm table manners turned into an Instagram account, @popeyethefoodie, with several hundred thousand followers….
In summary: Gabe was a small white mixed-breed dog — related to the American Eskimo and Pomeranian — adopted from a shelter by Canadian video creator Jesse Hamel. A 2013 clip of Gabe’s distinctive bark became one of the earliest viral “remix” sounds online, used in hundreds of meme videos, before his death from heart…
In summary: Maya (@mayapolarbear) is a Samoyed whose permanently smiling face — a trait of the breed’s structure — turned her into one of Instagram’s most recognizable dogs, building an audience of roughly 2 million followers and helping popularize the Samoyed breed worldwide. Samoyeds are bred with an upturned mouth that keeps them from drooling…
In summary: Bobi was a Rafeiro do Alentejo raised by the Costa family in rural Portugal, from May 1992 until his death in October 2023 at age 31 — a lifespan that earned him a 2023 Guinness World Record as the oldest dog ever recorded. Guinness later suspended, then revoked, the title in 2024 after…
In summary: Barry der Menschenretter was a St. Bernard who lived at the Great St. Bernard Hospice in the Swiss Alps in the early 1800s, credited with saving roughly 40 travelers stranded in the snow. He is the reason the St. Bernard breed carries a rescue reputation to this day, and the hospice has kept…
In summary: Apollo was a German Shepherd with the NYPD’s K-9 unit who, with handler Officer Peter Davis, was among the first search-and-rescue teams to reach Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 — arriving roughly 15 minutes after the South Tower collapsed. In 2002 he received the Dickin Medal on behalf of all the search-and-rescue…
In summary: Chips was a German Shepherd–Collie–Husky mix donated by a New York family to the U.S. Army’s K-9 Corps in WWII. In Sicily in 1943, he broke from his handler and attacked a concealed machine-gun position, forcing its crew to surrender. He received a Silver Star and Purple Heart — later revoked because he…
In summary: Frida is a Labrador Retriever who served with the Mexican Navy’s canine search-and-rescue unit. Photographed in her signature goggles and rescue boots after the 2017 Mexico City earthquake, she became a national symbol of the recovery effort, credited across her career with helping locate dozens of people, twelve of them found alive. Search…
In summary: Terry was a female Cairn Terrier trained by Carl Spitz who played Toto in The Wizard of Oz (1939), one of 23 film roles across her career. She earned $125 a week on the Oz set — more than some of her human co-stars — and died in 1945, later honored with a…