In the harsh Libyan desert in the middle of the second world war, Private Jim Moody, a signaller with the First Australian Machine Gun Battalion, found a starving puppy on a sand dune. Moody called the dog Horrie. Much more than a mascot, Horrie’s exceptional hearing picked up the whine of enemy aircraft two minutes before his human counterparts and repeatedly saved the lives of the thousand-strong contingent.

When the war was finished and Horrie smuggled back home, quarantine officers pounced and demanded that the dog be put down, prompting a huge public outcry. Was Horrie, the gunner’s hero, condemned to die or could Moody devise a scheme to save him?

In the finest ANZAC tradition, Horrie the War Dog is a story of intrigue and illusion, and of sacrifice, courage and loyalty.