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.

Britain Soccer Football, West Ham United vs Manchester United, Barclays Premier League, Old Trafford on May 10, 2016. Police play football with a young West Ham fan before the match. (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Reuters/Livepic)

An Egyptian security guard screams at people as medics bring in a stretcher to carry the wounded after the attack which killed President Anwar Sadat, October 6, 1981, as he watched a military parade. (Photo by AP Photo)

In this undated handout photograph from the “Inside Out Project”, a poster bearing the image of a Pakistani girl whose parents, lawyers say, were killed in a drone strike, lies in a field at an undisclosed location in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A group of artists in Pakistan are hoping to generate “empathy” among US drone operators by placing giant posters of children in the country's troubled tribal regions. (Photo by AFP Photo)

A Rafale fighter jet flies over France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier as it makes its way in the Gulf, January 28, 2016. (Photo by Philippe Wojazer/Reuters)

Kayaks, 7, poses for a picture holding toy gun in a camp where Christians displaced by Islamic State militants are living, in Irbil, Iraq, Friday, December 23, 2016. Iraq’s Christians are marking the holiday in his camp for displaced people with a sense of worry and despair, unable to return to their towns they were forced to flee two years ago by the Islamic State group’s onslaught. (Photo by Manu Brabo/AP Photo)

A visitor jumps for a photograph on the world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge above a valley in Zhangjiajie in China's Hunan Province on August 21, 2016. The bridge, which opened to the public on a trial basis on Saturday, spans 430 meters (1,410 feet) and rises about 300 meters (984 feet) above a valley in a scenic zone, making it the world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge according to Chinese state media. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)