Actress Violet McGraw, who played Cady in the film M3GAN, attends CinemaCon 2025 – Universal Pictures and Focus Features Invites You to a Special Presentation Featuring Footage from its Upcoming Slate at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace during CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, on April 2, 2025, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for CinemaCon)

Students of Rabindrabharati University apply colour dust or Gulal on each other during a celebration the festival of colour Holi in Kolkata, Eastern India, 23 March 2024. Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors, is an ancient Hindu festival symbolizing the victory of good over evil and marking the arrival of spring. It is observed with joyful gatherings during which revelers cover each other in colored powders. (Photo by Piyal Adhikary/EPA/EFE)

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.

Casket of Leibby Kletzky, a murdered eight-year-old boy who went missing from the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn is carried during a procession on July 13, 2011 in New York City. After a two day search Kletzky's dismembered body was found partially in a suitcase inside a dumpster and partially in a refrigerator in a nearby apartment. Police detectives have taken Levi Aron, 35, into custody in connection to the killing. (Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)

A group of San Bushmen from the Khomani San community practice their hunter-gatherer craft in the Southern Kalahari desert on October 15, 2009 in the Kalahari, South Africa. One of the largest studies of African genetics by an international team from the University of Pennsylvania, published in April 2009, revealed that the San of Southern Africa are the most genetically diverse on earth, and that the San homeland could be the spot where modern humanity began. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Final preperations are made backstage during Graduate Fashion Week at Earls Court on June 6, 2011 in London, England. The event which began in 1991 showcases emerging talent from BA Graduate fashion design courses across the UK and includes exhibition stands and catwalk shows from around 50 universities. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Individuals and populations student winner. Limbing in the Tropics, photographed in Manaus, Brazil. While walking in the Amazon rainforest looking for bat roosts to set up mist nets to capture bats for scientific research, a faint and almost imperceptible noise suddenly caught this photographer’s attention. An anteater was climbing with exceptional ability in a tangled mess of branches and lianas. (Photo by Adrià López Baucells/University of Lisbon/British Ecological Society)