AMedP-8.4 animal care and veterinary support during deployments

What it is

AMedP-8.4 is NATO's Allied Medical Publication on the care, welfare and veterinary support of military working animals across every phase of a deployment: before it, during it, on redeployment, and after the animal returns home. Edition B, Version 1, was published in August 2018. It is written as guidance for two audiences - commanders, and military veterinary units - rather than as a single set of pass/fail requirements, and it is built almost entirely around military working dogs. The document says outright that "primarily only military working dogs are affected by most deployments," though it also names camelids, mules, horses and donkeys used for patrol or as pack animals, and gives shorter, separate guidance on stray or feral animals and local agricultural animals encountered during operations.

What commanders are told to do

Chapter 1 exists "to inform commanders and provide guidance on issues concerning the care and welfare of military working animals during deployments." Before an animal deploys, that means reviewing the disease risk at the destination, confirming veterinary care is arranged, seeing to shelter and transport approved by military veterinary authorities, having the animal identified and accompanied by documentation, having it examined for fitness to deploy, and training its handler. During deployment, commanders keep veterinary examination and shelter arrangements running. On redeployment, correct documentation and coordination with veterinary staff comes first, and on return a further veterinary health examination is scheduled.

What veterinary units are told to do

Chapter 2 exists "to provide guidance on veterinary issues concerning the care and welfare of military working animals, and the protection of animal health during deployments." Responsibility sits with the nation deploying the animal: "Each Nation deploying dogs is responsible for mission analysis and must ensure veterinary care is available for their dogs during deployment," either through its own resources or by coordinating with an allied or host nation. What actually determines the veterinary capability a deployment needs is spelled out too: the number of animals, the host nation's own veterinary capability and its distance from allied support, the equipment available, and the local disease and hazard picture.

Four graded levels of veterinary support

The document sets out four Roles of Care in Annex A, running from routine and basic emergency aid at the point of injury or illness through to specialist, extended convalescent care. The stated aim at every Role is either to return the animal to duty or to move it on to a higher Role of care. A standard medical report, described in Annex B, is meant to keep a dog's clinical history with it as it moves between allied veterinary units or back to its own nation.

Animals other than military working dogs

Chapter 3 gives separate, shorter guidance on animal welfare issues that come up around a deployment but are not about the deployed force's own animals: stray or feral dogs and cats, local agricultural animals encountered during humanitarian and civil-military cooperation work, and preventing the transfer of animal disease more generally. Commanders are told to plan and communicate any population-control activity in advance and to keep it under veterinary advice and in line with applicable national laws and regulations. The chapter points readers to STANAG 2557 and to AMedP-26, an older NATO publication on major transmissible animal diseases, for more detail.

First aid, and a national responsibility

Chapter 4 treats first aid for military working dogs as a national responsibility rather than something this NATO publication standardises directly, framing it as covering the gap when veterinary care is not immediately available, particularly in combat. Handlers are expected to be trained to survey a scene, provide basic stabilisation, and hand over to veterinary personnel. STANAG 2126, which "defines minimum standards for first aid kits for humans, including individual first aid kits," is the baseline the document names; individual nations "may augment these kits as appropriate for the use in MWDs."

Who has actually adopted it

The Record of Reservations at the front of the document shows this guidance is applied unevenly across NATO. It records reservations from several nations at the time of promulgation, and notes plainly that the list "may not be complete." One nation's recorded reservation states that its armed forces "does not employ military veterinarians" and instead contracts licensed civilian veterinarians; others note they can staff only the lower Roles of Care themselves and rely on allied or host-nation veterinary support for the rest. A NATO Allied Medical Publication carried under a STANAG cover takes force through national ratification of that agreement, so what a given unit is actually bound to do depends on what its own nation has adopted or reserved against this text, not on the document in isolation.

How it is checked

There is no organisational certification scheme in this document, and nothing in it is assessed by an accredited body. The closest thing to an evaluation it describes is the individual health certificate a military veterinarian completes for an animal before it travels, together with periodic veterinary examinations of the animal itself. Both are checks on the condition of the animal, not audits of an organisation, and neither is a certification a unit or a nation can hold. Beyond STANAG 2557, AMedP-26 and STANAG 2126, the document also ties animal identification to two civil ISO standards for microchips and ties vaccination records to the EU's pet passport scheme; neither of those is part of our standards catalogue.

Standards it references

• STANAG 2557Background
• STANAG 2126Background