After our reports on Nubs and other Iraqi street dogs who have been rescued by American troops and shipped to the U.S., it's only right we give a salute to the U.S. dogs still there.

Like Army Staff Sgt. Iron, left, who is a member of one of about 200 canine teams deployed in Iraq, according to a feature story in today's Los Angeles Times.

Tina Susman, who also took the photo, wrote about the bond that forms between soldiers and their dogs -- one so deep that some handlers have specified that, if they and their canine partners are killed, they want to be buried together.

The U.S. military has used dogs in combat zones since World War II.

During Vietnam, about 4,300 dogs were deployed between 1965 and 1973, and 281 of them died in the line of duty. Hundreds more, Susman writes, were killed after U.S. troops departed because the Army had no provisions for military dogs to be adopted when their careers were over.

That changed in 2000, with the establishment of a rescue center at the Military Working Dog center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

Since the start of the Iraq war, about 1,000 dogs have passed through the combat zone, and three have been killed in action.

Their duties include sniffing out the roadside bombs, detecting booby-trap wires, searching for drugs and illegal weapons at border crossings, finding human remains and tracking and chasing down insurgents.

The war in Iraq is the first in which the military has sent dogs to serve as therapy animals for stressed-out troops.

In addition to her story, Susman put together a war dog blog entry with more photos.