They have four legs, cold wet noses and tails that often wag furiously. Yet the Defense Department classifies its working dogs as equipment. Advocates for the four-footed troops want this to change.

“When you lose a military working dog, you can’t just take another one off the shelf,” said Debbie Kandoll, founder of Military Working Dog Adoptions. “They’re not that easy to replace.”

Kandoll said she thinks the labeling of working dogs as equipment came by default.

“There are two classifications: manpower and equipment,” she said. “They’re not manpower, so they’re equipment.”

And once they retire, they’re classified as excess equipment.

“They could create a separate category for them, but they’ve just never done that,” Kandoll said.

The result, Kandoll said, is that retired military working dogs do not get the benefits they deserve, specifically transportation home, medical care and commendations.

The Defense Department can’t comment on working dogs’ classification “due to pending legislation,” said Gerry Proctor, a public affairs official with the Air Force’s 37th Training Wing.

To be sure, today’s military working dogs are not simply abandoned in the war zones, as they were in Vietnam, said Ron Aiello, a Vietnam veteran and former dog handler who now runs the U.S. War Dog Association.

But those who retire on U.S. military bases normally are not transported back to the States unless their adopter wants to pay for it.

“Once that dog is adopted, it becomes a pet, and therefore loses its [military working dog] status,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Mary Kay Hertog told the Air Force News Service in 2009, when she was the Air Force’s director of security forces. “So it would be fraud, waste and abuse for the DoD to transport that pet.”

Kandoll said she would be happy if DoD would go halfway and at least transport the dogs stateside.

“Get it back to the continental U.S. and then let the adopter pay after that,” she said. “Half-empty cargo planes … traverse the globe daily that could take a dog in a crate weighing 150 pounds and get it back to the U.S.”

After getting the dogs home, another hurdle that adopters face is paying for the health care of retired military working dogs. Many of the dogs have work-related health problems, and their care can be expensive.

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan investigative commission on Saturday accused the American military of abuse at its main prison in the country, repeating President Hamid Karzai’s demand that the U.S. turn over all detainees to Afghan custody and saying anyone held without evidence should be freed.

The demands put the U.S. and the Afghan governments on a collision course in an issue that will decide the fate of hundreds of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operators captured by American forces. Members of the Afghan investigation said U.S. officials told them that many of those militant suspects were taken based on intelligence that cannot be used in Afghan courts.

The escalating controversy and demands by Karzai appeared to be the most recent in a series of exercises in political brinksmanship, as the president tries to bolster his negotiating position ahead of renewed talks for a Strategic Partnership Document with America that will determine the U.S. role in Afghanistan after 2014, when most foreign troops are due to withdraw.

Among the conditions that Karzai has set is an end to night raids by international troops and complete Afghan control over detainees.

The dispute that has unfolded in recent days mirrors many of the thorny issues surrounding the controversial U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. There, as at the prison in Afghanistan, American forces are holding many detainees without charging them with a specific crime or presenting evidence in a civil court.

Detainees interviewed during two visits to the U.S.-run portion of the prison outside Bagram Air Base north of Kabul complained of freezing cold, humiliating strip searches and being deprived of light, according to Gul Rahman Qazi, who led the investigation ordered by Karzai.

Another investigator, Sayed Noorullah, said the prison must be transferred to Afghan control “as soon as possible,” adding that “If there is no evidence ... they have the right to be freed.”

U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall said Saturday that American officials only received the commission’s report after the briefing. He said the U.S. investigates all allegations of prisoner abuse.

“We will certainly take seriously the report and study it,” he said. He added that the U.S. is committed to working with the Afghan government on a joint plan to turn over detainees “in a responsible manner.”

Even as military officials continue to work on easing the stigma of seeking help for mental health issues, many service members remain loath to admit they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder or have suicidal thoughts, according to a study published recently in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

A review of post-deployment screening questionnaires completed by an Army brigade combat team found that those who were allowed to complete the forms anonymously reported depression, PTSD and suicidal thoughts at rates two to four times higher than those who had to put their names on the forms.

And more than 20 percent of the soldiers who screened positive for depression or PTSD said they were uncomfortable reporting their answers honestly in routine post-deployment screenings.

“Current post-deployment mental health screening tools are dependent on soldiers honestly reporting their symptoms. This study indicates that post-deployment health assessment screening process misses most soldiers with significant mental health problems,” wrote the authors, eight physicians stationed at military bases and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, Md.

The Pentagon has launched several initiatives to reduce mental health stigma: Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli is lobbying the American Psychological Association to drop “disorder” from PTSD’s name; each service has its own marketing campaign to promote the positive effects of getting help; and physicians are explaining to patients that PTSD symptoms like hypervigilance, insomnia and agitation are normal in prolonged extreme circumstances such as combat.

“They report being ‘always on,’ which is normal, even desired in combat. It becomes a problem when you place them in an environment like being home,” said Dr. Greg Gahm, director of the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, at a December forum on combat trauma.

Still, the stigma remains, not only within the military but in the civilian mental health community.

“The study shows that more needs to be done,” said Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio psychiatrist who says he has screened more than 6,000 veterans in the past decade.

“Vets are telling me that if you fill the form out truthfully and you want to be a career soldier, your career is over.”