Patron the Dog

Submission 3,367

Part of a series on 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. [View Related Entries]

About

Patron the Dog (ukr. Патрон) is a landmine finder dog and a mascot of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. Following the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Jack Russell Terrier went viral on social media, later becoming a subject of memes and fan art where he was often praised for keeping people safe during the war.

Origin

On March 15th, 2022, the official Facebook^[1] page of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine shared a photograph of Jack Russel Terrier sniffer dog Patron ("cartridge" in Ukrainian), introducing it as a mascot of deminers working in Chernihiv. The post received over 9,700 reactions and 5,600 shares in two months (shown below).

Meet Patron. He's two year old. He's the soul and mascot of Chernihiv deminers who accompanies them everywhere. By the way, he loves cheese very much, so our boys spoil him from time to time.

On March 19th, 2022, the Facebook^[2] page shared a video of Patron, which gained over 260,000 views and 15,000 reactions in two months. On the same day, Twitter^[3] account @StratcomCenter shared the video, with the post going viral as the clip gained over 873,500 views, 6,600 retweets and 27,000 likes on the website (shown below).

Spread

On March 20th, 2022, an Instagram^[4] account for Patron was launched, with the sniffer dog also getting a Twitter^[5] account on April 26th. Both accounts, as well as social media pages of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, shared images and videos of the dog in the following weeks (shown below).

Starting in mid-April 2022, Patron drew major attention from traditional as well as social media as it became a subject of news reports, discussions and fan art. For example on April 11th and 13th, artists mama.voodoo, slavon_85 and khomutova_art posted fan art of the dog to Instagram,^[6]^[7]^[8] with the posts gaining over 690, 180 and 560 likes, respectively (shown below). On April 16th, 2022, Ukrainska Pravda^[9] ran a story about the dog that accumulated nearly 30,000 views in roughly one month.

On April 28th, fan Twitter^[10] account @patron_pes was launched, sharing memes and fan art of the dog in the following weeks.

On May 8th, 2022, the Facebook^[11] page of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine shared a video of Patron being awarded a medal by the Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. The video (shown below) gained over 39,000 views and 2,900 reactions in two days and was widely circulated on social media.

Following the viral spread of the video, more traditional media reported about the dog, including stories by The New York Times^[12] and Reuters.^[13]

As of May 8th, 2022, Patron has sniffed out over 230 Russian explosive devices.^[14]