Medical staff celebrate after all patients were discharged at a temporary hospital set up to treat people with the COVID-19 coronavirus in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on March 9, 2020. China closed most of its makeshift hospitals for coronavirus patients, some schools reopened and Disney resort staff went back to work on March 9 as normality slowly returns to the country after weeks battling the epidemic. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

People wear face masks while participating in the annual Memorial Day Parade on May 25, 2020 in the Staten Island borough of New York City. Dozens of cars and nearly 100 members of the patriotic motorcycle group Rolling Thunder joined the event. This year’s parade was diminished in size and in person-to-person contact due to the coronavirus outbreak. Across the country, events honoring the nation’s veterans have been cancelled or scaled back as America continues to experience high numbers of deaths and new cases of COVID-19. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A model wears a creation as part of the Prada women's Spring Summer 2023 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Thursday, September 22, 2022. (Photo by Antonio Calanni/AP Photo)

An Argentina soccer fan watches the team lose to Saudi Arabia at a World Cup Group C soccer match, played on a large screen in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos, Aires, Argentina, early Tuesday, November 22, 2022. (Photo by Gustavo Garello/AP Photo)

In this Friday, January 9, 2015 photo, bathhouse worker Omid Riahi, 39, scrubs a man to remove dead skin, at the Ghebleh public bathhouse, in Tehran, Iran. The steamy air and curved tiled walls of Iran's famed public bathhouses, some rinsing and massaging patrons for hundreds of years, slowly may wash away as interest in them wanes. The bathhouses, known as “hammams” in Persian, find themselves in rough financial times as modern conveniences now allow showers and baths in most homes across the Islamic Republic. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A picture made available on 09 September 2015 shows traditional mud men dancers from the Asaro District of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea perform for the official opening of the Pacific Islands Forum in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 08 September 2015. The Pacific Islands Forum goes from 07 to 11 September and discusses the regions vulnerability to Climate Change. (Photo by Mick Tsikas/EPA)

Throughout the course of the long war in Afghanistan, Coalition troops have relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe, and make their jobs easier. The dogs are trained to detect explosives, to find illegal drugs, to search for missing comrades, or target enemy combatants. Not only are they active on the front lines, but behind the lines they serve as therapy dogs, service dogs, and loyal companions. They also share the same risks as the ground troops, suffering injuries and sometimes death on the battlefields. Gathered here are images of these dogs and their handlers in Afghanistan and back home, from over the past several years, part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.

Men pull with a rope the body of an Islamic State fighter before burying him near Karamah, south of Mosul, Iraq November 11, 2016. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)