In fairness, dogs can still be trained to work in chaotic and dangerous situations, even little ones. It’s harder, but still possible. Not for every dog admittedly, but that was true even back then (supposedly, this is third and fourth hand on my end).

It’s just a matter of acclimation, but it’s like any given dog job. A dog that’s great as a seeing eye might not be right for police work, and a police dog might suck at herding. Not every spaniel would follow you into hell calmly, no matter how much work you put in, but some would. Hunting dogs get trained to be around gunfire, and some of those breeds are high strung.

That being said, the old school mollosoi dogs are a fascinating slice of history, and had a reputation that’s still amazing. Likely over blown, and I can guarantee there were plenty that didn’t make it as war dogs, but the legend of Peritas is a good indicator of how people back then thought of them.

Edit: the mollosoi thing was tangential, not based on the image

Also, I’m not sure what the plural is for that kind of dog, but molossoi weed what I ran into when doing an essay on them ages ago, so it’s what stuck in memory. But as I often do, I did a quick search to refresh my memory and saw multi plural versions, so now I’m wondering if my memory is total bullshit lol