PEOPLE Pets | Sit. Stay. Play!

The surgeon is concerned, but not because the patient is drooling. That's to be expected at the Holland Military Working Dog Hospital, located at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Surgeon Maj. Michelle Franklin is examining a spectacular wound on 5-year-old Sumo, a Belgian Tervuren shepherd who has gone through four operations. "We've taken pieces of skin from other places," explains Franklin, pointing at her patient's side, "and shifted them around to try to help him heal."

Sumo's prognosis is good; Franklin says he'll be able to return to work as soon as the wound heals.

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When five-year-old Angelica saw smoke from under the covers in the middle of the night, she knew there was a fire. She also knew, thanks to Sparkles the Fire Safety Dog, that she had to crawl on the ground to get out of the house as fast as she could.

She told her father, "Come on, Daddy, you have to get down and crawl low, just like Sparkles."

Angelica and her father barely made it out the door before their house was in engulfed in flames.

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Amanda Bjelland's early morning stroll turned scary on Feb. 25.

The Montana resident usually starts each day with a walk to the mailbox at the end of her property accompanied by her two best friends: Chloe, 6, a female pug, and Willow, 1, an indoor Siamese mix cat.

"We do this around 6 am while it is still dark outside," Bjelland, a receptionist in the radiation dept. of a Billings health care facility, tells PEOPLEPets.com. But something was off that day when came back inside the house, "Chloe walked to the back door and started crying," she recalls.

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On the occasion of his birthday on Feb. 16, Mark Smith took the afternoon off from work and took a long walk through the Santa Cruz mountains with his German shepherd, Copper.

They were walking along a creek, which ran through rugged terrain, when Smith heard a faint howling sound in the distance. Five-year-old Copper caught a scent and tugged Smith toward the creek, where they found an emaciated dog on the other side.

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Treo's deep brown eyes are beautiful — and knowing — but for the soldiers in Afghanistan whose lives he saved, it's his nose that really sets the dog apart.

On two separate occasions in 2008, the 8-year-old black Labrador, an Arms and Explosives Search dog, sniffed out improvised explosive devices placed on the roadside by the Taliban.

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Webster works like a service dog, but he isn't one. And he sometimes acts like a bratty little kid, but he isn't that either. Webster is a 21-year-old capuchin monkey that lives with Marine Cpl. Tim Jeffers, who lost his legs, right eye, part of his right forefinger and part of his skull in Iraq in 2006.

Jeffers, 25, lives with Webster in an apartment in San Diego. Through intensive rehabilitation, Jeffers can move about with the help of a wheelchair or custom made prosthetic legs. But tasks like turning on a light switch and using a remote can cause him great pain, which is where Webster comes in.

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Denise Richards frequently shares photos of her beloved dogs on Twitter -- sleeping, hugging and just plain enjoying life. But she hasn't forgotten about the millions of dogs who aren't as lucky, and on Monday the actress spent several hours helping 30 dogs who were headed for death row in Los Angeles.

Along with the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary's Pup My Ride program, Richards, and her pal, Dancing With the Stars alum Joanna Krupa, helped get 30 pure and mixed breed small dogs ready for a 14 hour drive from L.A.'s Baldwin Park Animal Shelter, a county kill facility, to the Humane Society in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they have a waiting list for small canines.

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