Could a dog have stopped Trump assassination attempt?

As the media has fumbled through reporting the assassination attempt on former President Trump on July 13, 2024, at his rally in PA, a lot of questions have come up about security measures and the fitness of the secret service to execute their sole mission of protecting their principal. The attempt is a failure on the part of the secret service as shots were fired by the shooter which grazed the former president, killed one rally goer, and severely injured two other rally goers. But as all of this has unfolded, one question keeps coming back to my mind: “where were the protection dogs in this scenarios?”

Dogs have famously been used by the secret service for protection and bomb sniffing with Malinois like Hurricane even being awarded with the Distinguished Service Medal for excellence in executing their duties. From scouring the internet, it does seem that their primary use is guarding the white house and bomb sniffing at various events. However, I can’t readily locate photos or evidence that they are regularly used as part of the closer presidential protection detail that travels with the president (if you have contrary evidence feel free to leave a comment and let me know).

The simple reason that they are probably not a key part of the immediate protection detail is that their presence adds more risk than it mitigates. Dogs are not perfect – they bark, they use the bathroom, even protection dogs may bite random people if they are too close, and if they were to be deployed in a crowd of thousands of people who almost definitely not be able to get to an attacker faster enough or be able to find the target at all. So a dog standing near the former president at this rally that took place would almost definitely not be an effective protection strategy.

But dogs could, and in my unprofessional opinion, should be used heavily on the perimeter of such events. The perimeter, outside the security checkpoints, is generally not as heavily crowded. If someone is trying to sneak up, dogs can more effectively be deployed as a non lethal measure where there is a potential risk to security but time to try non lethal measures first.

In this particular instance, the shooter at this rally climbed on to a building outside of the security checkpoints and indeed was spotted by law enforcement who attempted to climb the ladder to the building only to have the shooter point their gun at law enforcement who then either they dropped from the roof or climbed back down (the reports conflict on this). This could’ve have been a scenario where if a trained Malinois were present and helping to secure the outer perimeter 1) the shooter would never have been able to get on the roof and 2) law enforcement could have sent the dog on to the roof to at least distract the shooter. It was a relatively small 20 year old who attempted this – a decently sized Malinois would’ve have torn him up no problem.

It’s easy to speculate what might have happened or even what did happen since the details of this attack don’t really make sense but I do know a couple of things: 1) dogs are a deterrent even for armed individuals and their presence is going to make someone who is trying to sneak up in situations like this more cautious (a dog can get to them quickly) 2) a dog could’ve been effectively deployed at a couple different points in this story.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the investigation into this assassination attempt uncovers but I strongly believe dogs could’ve been effectively utilized in this scenario.