Doggone!

This is coolbert:

You know this particular article would instantly be of interest to me. Thanks to Freeper.

Russian dog o' war not so reliable after all.

We tend to think of the Russian and the Soviet before them as never making mistakes or having failure, always their military R and D projects succeeding. That is just not so!!

"Russia’s police dog cloning program has run into a few, er… snags"

"Russia has scrapped its cloned dogs of war program after the first batch of ‘superpups’ flunked basic tests because they could not handle the cold, it has emerged."

"The designer dogs were cloned in a laboratory to sniff out explosives and drugs and put through their paces by Vladimir Putin’s law enforcement agency in Yakutsk, capital of the Sakha Republic, Russia’s largest region."

. . . .

"The dogs, each valued over $100,000, have reportedly been complete and utter failures. According to the Siberian Times, the dogs are incapable of performing even the most basic police dog tasks . . . the dogs failed because they’re not used to the brutal Siberian climate"

That war dog of choice for the Russian I had read and thought to be the Russian Black Terrier. A cross between the Giant Schnauzer [smart] and the Rottweiler [rough and vicious]. Also the Black Terrier able to stand the extreme cold of Siberia and thrive?

To get a sense of scale this image shows a man tussling with a Russian Black Terrier. Look at the size of that dog! It appears to be a man in costume or something but NO, that is the real thing! War dogs of that size leave something to be desired? The handler according to modern concepts  is expected on occasion to pick the dog up and carry as is necessitated. Russian Black Terrier too has a thick coat of fur, not a short hair?

"One of them failed to perform any task. Immediately, it lay down because of the cold. The second dog was slightly better, but completed only 50% of tasks. They are not adapted to our harsh conditions, they are smooth coated, cannot withstand frost."

That word doggone [damn] having an undeniable negative connotation in this instance.

coolbert.