Dogs of War Has a Home in Middle School Classrooms

Dogs of War Makes for Terrific Reading

A colleague, well aware of my affinity for graphic novels, made sure to hand off to me a copy of Dogs of War by Shiela Keenan and Nathan Fox, as well as, a copy of Romeo & Juliet by Gareth Hinds. As of this moment, I doth not have anything to scribe about the latter, not having read it… just yet. For the former, I doth have plenty to scribe about.

Dogs of War is comprised of three short stories, each depicting the role one canine has played in one of three wars –WW I, WW II, and Vietnam. Although the stories are named after each of the dogs (Boots, Loki, and Sheba), and this leads you to believe you’ll be following closely their stories, the canines generally share the spotlight with their various human protagonists. Some might be upset to going into the work to find out the dogs aren’t the main thrust of the book. For me, that hardly mattered. I found the storytelling for all three tales to be brisk, informative, and interesting throughout.

In “Boots”, the first story set in WWII, readers are thrown into the harrowing experiences of trench warfare as viewed through the eyes of a 16-year-old soldier and his loyal dog. Floods, mud, cold, poor nutrition, and bullets –Oh, there are bullets!- fill the story panels as a 16-year-old Donnie and his mates work to hold to a bloodied length of land and survive their terrible battle against the Germans.

If this were all the story had to offer, I’d be hard pressed to find the motivation to write about it here. Where the story develops into something worth sharing with you and (hopefully) with students is in the author’s attention to historical details.

When our human protagonist, Donnie, and his canine, Boots, first find their newest trench allies, the soldiers are, almost pleasantly, trading hot bullets with the Germans over walls of sandbags. Young Donnie is surprised by this but told it’s merely “the morning hate”, whereby each side essentially recognizes that what transpires between them is a common morning occurrence –as if to say, Oh this shooting at each other is nothing to worry about. This seemingly misplaced attitude amid battle is actually –to borrow from our British friends- spot on. Many a soldier who returned from WWI reported as much. I read that some soldiers referred to the morning volley of bullets as “trading tea”, a cute moniker for a dangerous practice. But, the pithy remark underscores something about the sensibilities of the time. Soldiers, on both sides, still held to a sense of nobility in fighting a war, a sense of gentlemanliness. Even if they were trying to knock one another off.

Not wanting to give away too much, I’ll add that "Boots" presents an account of WWI that any middle school student would find highly interesting. Heck, I’m middle-aged and loved seeing the brief scene in which a soldier is cooking up some juicy lice he’s plucked from his uniform.  It’s a story sure to spur discussion about what war, life, and attitudes were like in the early 1900’s; and that can only be a good thing for those of us trying to feed youthful mind.

The other two stories in the collection are equally accurate in their depiction of how men and animals behaved in their respective wars. I was particularly appreciative of the author’s decision to not simply turn these stories into Disney-esque accounts of dogs at war. In fact, although the dogs are presented as the heroes to the stories, they’re really closer to secondary characters, the human protagonists being far better fleshed out for readers. Again, the cause seemed to be to show war as it actually was without making it inaccessible to middle school students. It was also to show how dogs have served our soldiers for a century and more.

Keenan’s and Fox’s story is worthy of classroom use. A halfway decent teacher (and I think I juuuust make that cut) can use the interest it garners to spin students off into further reading exploration about war, dogs, the 1900’s, the 70’s, and much more. I’m already thinking this book will be a fine companion piece to Cynthia Kadohata’s novel Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam, a historical fiction book about a dog and his handler helping men survive during the Vietnam War.