Belgian Malinois

When the military, the police, and special units all over the world need a dog of absolutely the highest class — for searching out explosives, chasing down fugitives, or the hardest, most risky operations — they surprisingly often reach for one specific breed: the Belgian Malinois. This sleek, muscular dog in a fawn coat with a black mask comes from Belgium, from the area of the city of Malines (hence the name), where it originally served as a herder. It is sometimes confused with the German Shepherd, but it is lighter than it, faster, and even more intense — an athlete to the marrow, one of the most intelligent and versatile working dogs that exist. And all these talents grow from one single trait that defines the whole breed: the Malinois has within it a need for work so enormous that it beats in it like a second heart.

This is a dog that simply cannot be bored — or rather, will not allow anyone within a range of several dozen meters to be bored. The Malinois wakes in the morning with a ready plan for the day and the unshakable conviction that one must get down to work immediately; the trouble is that if you do not organize this work, it will most gladly invent it for itself — and its ideas for “work” tend to concern things you would rather not entrust to a dog. It will open every gate it considers a challenge, jump a fence at whose sight other dogs merely wag their tails, and learn a complex sequence of movements faster than you can think about whether you really want it to know it. It has within it a reserve of energy that would comfortably supply a whole battle-hardened team, and its mind works without a moment's pause, constantly searching for a task, a puzzle, a goal. A Malinois bored and without occupation is not a lazy dog — it is a frustrated dog, and a frustrated Malinois can take apart the house and its own nerves down to their basic components. This breed does not know the concept of “half-heartedly”: whatever it does, it does at a hundred percent.

And it is precisely this absolute uncompromisingness that leads to the essence of this breed — because the Malinois ultimately directs all its cavernous energy, intelligence, and intensity in one place: toward its human. This is a dog almost painfully devoted, which wants not so much to be by you as to act with you — it longs to perform tasks, to learn, to cooperate, and to feel that you are one team. The bond that then arises has in it a depth hard to describe to someone who has not lived through it: it is an understanding of two beings working toward a shared goal, based on absolute, unconditional trust. The Malinois will not love you lukewarmly or “incidentally,” because it does nothing in life lukewarmly. It will love you the same way it does everything else — without reserve, without hedging, with all that inexhaustible power of its directed solely at you. And it must be said honestly: this is not a dog for everyone, but for someone who will return this devotion with time, work, and a truly shared life. If, however, you are that person, you will gain a partner few have — ready to give you literally everything it carries within it.

The Belgian Malinois is an exceptional dog in the fullest sense of the word — not the easiest and not for everyone, but for the right person simply unrivaled. Everything that defines it — the drive, the courage, the sharpness, that unquenchable spark in its eyes — exists so that it can work with someone, serve someone, give absolutely everything of itself for someone.

Give it occupation worthy of its abilities, movement that will tire that inexhaustible body, and a place on the team that you are to it — and it will give you in return loyalty and devotion you would search for in vain in other dogs. Because although the Malinois has searched airports, chased criminals, and set off where others were afraid, the most important mission of its life is not any of these tasks at all. Its most important mission is you — and there is no such thing it would not do for it.