Soviet mine-dogs

Mr. Paul, thanks for reviving my memory. :) 
I got the front right, but the order wrong (it was Soviet Dogs and 
German tanks they were trying to destroy). 

You said:
The mine-dogs were a Soviet idea- they were kept starving and fed,
minimally, under tanks with the engines running. As for the business 
about them being ineffective due to being trained under the wrong 
type of tank (Soviet diesels instead of German petrol engines, so 
they associated the wrong smell with food) is a German story, which I 
think is a wee story to cheer the troops, for the following reasons:
1) The RKKA used mine-dogs until 1943, when they were on the 
offensive and such an emergency defensive weapon was no longer 
useful. The Russians claimed that 16 dogs at Kursk killed 12 German 
tanks.

[Tomb]: Is there credible independent verification of this? For the 
record, Russian docs claimed a lot of things that were 
unsubstantiated for that self same "good for the troops" reason you 
just mentioned. I'd be interested in any references you could 
provide. I'm aware of references on the German side that dispute the 
effectiveness of these dogs. 

2) The Germans shot all dogs on sight in case they were mines

[Tomb] Probably a good idea for any number of reasons. They also shot 
a fair number of Russians for similarly paranoid (and not necessarily 
unjustly) reasons. The Eastern Front was a truly unhappy place.

3) How would they know how the dogs were trained? If from POWs how 
could they trust such info?

[Tomb] How do you trust any intelligence you gain? Elint, Humint, 
etc. - You try to cross reference, verify sources, etc. And you take 
field observations into account, but treat them as any eyewitness 
account. This is hardly a problem unique to this situation.

4) The RKKA had plenty of petrol driven AFVs

[Tomb] My understanding was the problem was shape related moreso than 
the particulars of diesel/petrol related. Someone with more knowledge 
of canine visual perceptions than I could either confirm or debunk 
that. I've always found my dog good at shape recognition, but not 
terribly great at understanding a task that differs from one he was 
trained to. 

5) The Russians had a lot of knowledge of dog training techniques 
(Pavlov!) and were subtle enough to "train" German explosives 
sniffers to ignore explosives (Partisans sprinkled tiny fragments of 
explosive around targets; the dog would detect these and would then 
be punished for its "mistake". The dogs soon learned not to warn of 
explosives at all.

[Tomb] This one I don't doubt. I'm just very skeptical of Russian 
claims of efficacy. Every side in the war inflated their scores 
against the enemy, but the Russians had as much reason as anyone 
(perhaps even more than most) to do some "creative accounting to 
boost morale". It could be that the Germans were downplaying the 
efficacy of this tactic. But it could also be that the Russians were 
jacking it up (an "Enemy at the Gates" type scenario comes to mind). 
OTOH, the truth probably lies somewhere between Russian and German 
claims. And no one will probably ever have more than an educated 
guess. Besides, its a pretty damn rotten thing to do to a dog.