Armistice Day 2022: Meet Northern Ireland's four-legged military veteran of Bosnia and Afghanistan

Zadar, aged 13, recently retired after 10 years helping the military and the police, and – clad in a harness with the words ‘military veteran’ on it – was brought to the 11am ceremony by 28-year-old sales worker Elliott.

Asked where the dog had been posted, Elliott said: “Not everything gets disclosed to you, but what we can see is he'd been to Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Gibraltar.”

In Gibraltar, he worked with the police in roles including “protecting dignitaries", but before that had mainly worked as a sniffer dog trained to find explosives.

Asked whether he had saved lives, Elliott said: “Oh definitely. His job was to go out first and basically just sniff out any explosives in the soldiers' way. He was the first out in any field, so he definitely did save lives.

"As a protection dog, who knows what he got up to in that kind of line of work!”

He added: “Military working dogs, and military animals, don't get represented enough.

"they play a huge part in thE british military and they can't be forgotten.

"So many dogs go out and get injured or even die in combat. Same with the horses.

"They don't have a choice. they don't say 'yeah I'll go out to Afghanistan’. They don't have a voice.

"He is here, happy, retired. But some dogs don't come back.”