🧨 Patron
Dog (Jack Russell Terrier) · Chernihiv, Ukraine
Lives in City Block
Patron is a Jack Russell terrier born 20 July 2019, bought as a pet for the son of Mykhailo 'Misha' Iliev, a bomb-disposal technician with Ukraine's State Emergency Service. After the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 he began working alongside Iliev's team detecting unexploded ordnance around Chernihiv, and a Facebook video posted 19 March 2022 showing him in a tiny tactical harness went worldwide. President Zelensky awarded him and Iliev the Order for Courage on 9 May 2022, Cannes gave him a Palm Dog award that month, and UNICEF named him its first Goodwill 'AmbassaDOG' in November 2022. He is now used mostly to teach Ukrainian children mine safety rather than to work live ordnance.
What they do
Nose down, scrabbles at the dirt with both front paws, then drops into a hard sit beside the spot and freezes with his tail stiff. Three frames: nose to ground, front paws digging, sit and freeze..
Four kilos of pure job. Finds the bomb, gets the cheese, runs a lap, sleeps.
Lore
- ★He weighs about 4 kg — less than the roughly 5 kg of pressure most anti-personnel mines need to trigger.
- ★Ukrposhta charity stamps bearing his face raised around $500,000.
- ★He was trained on the smell of gunpowder; the exact number of devices he has flagged is classified.
- ★His handler says his one weakness is cheese.
Helping the real one
State Emergency Service of Ukraine / UNICEF Ukraine mine-risk education is real. We have not verified its link yet.
We publish a donation link only once we have checked it ourselves.
Where this comes from
- Wikipedia Patron (dog) — awards, service record and denial of death hoaxes ↗
- TODAY Patron the mine-sniffing dog is capturing Ukraine's hearts ↗
Every link here was checked twice before it was published. If one is dead or wrong, tell us.