Attack Dogs

"Dogs. I hate dogs."

— "Soap" MacTavish in Contingency.

Dogs make appearances in the games: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World at War and Modern Warfare 2. They play different parts in all three games. A variation of the dogs appear in Nazi Zombies as Hellhounds.

File:071202 doghandler 450.jpg

A Marine and his guard dog in real life.

Single Player

In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World at War, and Modern Warfare 2, dogs jump on the player and knock them down. Like a Banzai charger, the player can kill them before they kill the player by pressing the melee button to break their neck at the right time. They're easy to hear and spot by their growling. If the player breaks the dog's neck at the right time and survive the attack on the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare they will get the "Down Boy Down" achievement. Dogs in single player mode appear as German Shepherds.

Multiplayer

In World at War multiplayer, dogs can be called in by a player after killing seven enemy players consecutively without dying. The dogs spawn and attack enemy players on the map for 60 seconds. Friendly dogs appear as German Shepherds and enemy dogs are black Belgian malinois.

The dogs can be killed, but will continue to respawn until the 60 second cycle has ended. Dogs attack by lunging and biting at enemy players. Players can survive up two dog lunges before dying in Regular modes, but only one in Hardcore. Killing a dog will give a player 2-3 EXP depending on the game mode, but will not count as a kill or an assist. However, in Team Deathmatch and Free-for-All players score 3 and 2 points respectively, making it possible to actually win the game with fewer kills than would otherwise be necessary. For this reason, it can actually be detrimental to call in Dogs in these gametypes. Dogs rarely go into water and cannot climb ladders. Dogs also cannot attack players in tanks.

Defense against Dogs

• Dogs should be killed as quickly as possible.
• Tanks are impervious to Dogs and can kill them easily.
• The Reconnaissance perk allows the player to see the locations of the dogs.

Staying in an area where the dogs can only come from one direction makes them easier to deal with.

• A common tactic in multiplayer is for players to use bayonets. This will conserve ammo and will instantly kill the dog, and has more range than the knife.
• Dogs will use staircases. Also, in the map "Courtyard", if the player uses the trick to get up above the ground on the two center platforms, dogs can also jump up there. However they cannot get on top of the archway connecting the two. The same goes for all other archways.
• Bouncing Betties will kill Dogs instantly.
• Dogs hate water in multiplayer, this makes Makin night a good battlefield for avoiding dogs.
• Be careful about using an unsuppressed weapon when defending yourself against dogs as it will easily give away your position.
• Dogs cannot reach the player if they stand on a table or other raised surface. They will only look and growl.
• If the player lies down in a corner dogs will not be able to lunge on top of the player and will only be able to bite at the player from one angle making them much easier to deal with.
• There is a glitch on Outskirts where if you go to the top of the church tower and lie down on the floor facing the stairs, the dogs will stand at the floor below you, look up, and bark.

Strategies with Dogs

• Following Dogs is an easy way of locating enemies. But beware the enemy might see you first so using a sniper will raise your chances of surviving.
• Dying before calling in Dogs doesn't allow players to use the dogs to get more killstreak rewards, as dog kills only count toward a player's killstreak during the life that they were called in.
• As noted above, if a player is trying to defend himself from dogs and does not have either a flash hider or suppressor equipped, he will show up on the radar as a red dot giving away his position. Use this to your advantage.

Levels featuring Dogs

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
  • The Coup
  • Hunted
  • Safehouse
  • All Ghillied Up
  • One Shot, One Kill
  • Sins Of The Father
  • Ultimatum

• Call of Duty: World at War
  • Vendetta
  • Relentless (Mentioned only for a few bits of dialog)

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  • Takedown
  • Contingency
  • Loose Ends
  • Just Like Old Times
  • The Enemy Of My Enemy

Trivia

• Although realistically dogs cannot climb ladders, they have been known to leap 6ft high to get on top of objects, such as the grass-jungly walls on "Courtyard" and can even jump the entire ladder on the balcony in "Dome".
• Dogs can hit and kill the player that called them in, but the player would have to be standing in the way of an enemy, which is practically impossible.
• In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, when dogs jump on NPCs (such as MacMillan), the NPCs will not attempt to break the dogs' necks, but rather shoot them in the side of the head with a pistol.
• When using the god cheat on the PC version of Modern Warfare, if the player is killed by a dog, their body will dissolve into a pool of blood but they will still be able to move around as a "ghost". Enemies will still shoot at the "ghost".
• In Modern Warfare 2, the level Contingency has Soap MacTavish says "Dogs. I hate dogs". This is a reference to Indiana Jones where he says "Snakes. I hate Snakes", and also a reference to the many dogs you encountered in the original Modern Warfare. It could also be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the movie Dog Soldiers, which Kevin McKidd, the voice actor of Soap, was in.
• In Modern Warfare 2, it is actually possible to permanently cripple a dog if you shoot it in a specific part of it's leg. This can be done in Contingency where in the beginning you see a patrol with a dog and its master in front. Even with its speed reduced to about 10%, it will relentlessly chase after you, in which case you can either outrun it or put it out of its misery - a direct hit with a thrown stun grenade should finish it off.
• In Modern Warfare 2, if you are playing Spec Ops, when a dog jumps on you, your friend can kill the dog while it is on you, before or after you fail to grab the dog.
• In World at War, if the server settings are to have life set to 2x, dogs are relatively ineffective as they take two hits on the enemy to kill them. Considering this is outside the dogs natural programming (it should only take one strike to kill) it will stand there for a few seconds before dealing the deadly strike giving the player time to kill the dog. It should be noted, however, that the dogs themselves have double the life meaning they are harder to take down.
• Because of the incredible feats dogs sometimes pull off in order to kill an enemy in World at War, some have jokingly compared them to "Underdog." This generally comes after the dog appears to fly through the air over a barrier.

Quotes

A dog attacking.

-Marine Raiders

• "Bring in the dogs!"
• "Dogs, coming right at us!"

-Imperial Japanese Army

• "The dogs hunger for the flesh of our enemies!"
• "The savages send dogs to do their work!"

-Wehrmacht

• "Our hounds will tear them to shreds!"
• "They send their hounds! But they too will find only death!"

-Red Army

• "Unleash the dogs!"
• "They have released the dogs!"