Animal of the Year: SEAL Team Six’s Canine Companion
Sure, your dog might bark at the mailman on occasion. But this dog helped take down Osama bin Laden. Accompanying the now-famed Navy SEAL Team Six, who completed the May 2 bin Laden mission, was a faithful four-legged fighter. The trained military dog, either a German Shepherd or a Belgian Malinois, was attached to a human soldier and lowered from a helicopter into the compound. Wearing canine armor, he went along to sniff out hidden explosives or, if necessary, find a secret room of bin Laden’s. A commenter on our original post about the pup noted, “This should pretty much end the ‘dogs are better than cats’ argument.” And he (or she) is even the star of our number-one animal story of 2011. This heroic dog deserves an extra treat, or twelve.
LIST: Top 10 Animal Stories of 2011
Next: Runner-Up: Loukanikos, the Greek Protest Dog
