THE WAR OF A STRAY DOG

Can you ever imagine that a dog can start a war between two countries.

Well, this was what exactly happened between two countries, Greece and Bulgaria. This incident at Petrich, or War of the stray Dog, was a Greek-Bulgarian crisis in 1995 that resulted in brief invasion of Bulgaria by Greece near the town of Petrich.

Both of the counties Greece and Bulgaria were already under a state of tension since so long to increase their respective territories. 

One day a Greek soldier was stationed at the border with his dog and suddenly the dog ran away and unfortunately crossed the Bulgarian border, the Greek soldier got panicked and without thinking twice, he too entered the Bulgarian border in order to bring his dog back. 

As soon as the Bulgarian soldiers noticed this happening they have immediately started firing over the Greek soldier, the Greek guard then in response opened fired on the Bulgarians too. And as the tension between these two countries was existing since too many years, this small incident escalated and took a form of huge conflict between both.

Both armies fought this war for almost 10 days in which 10,000 Bulgarian and 20,000 Greek soldiers have fought in the war among which 50 Bulgarian and 125 Greek casualties and losses were noted. 

There are two versions of how the incident started.

In the first version, the incident began in October 18 by a Greek soldier running after his dog. It is thus sometimes referred to as the War of the stray Dog. 

In the second version, the incident was caused on October 18 by Bulgarian soldiers, who crossed the Greek border, attacked a Greek outpost captain and a sentry.

Finally, after 10 days of war from 19-29 October 1995 this incident ended after a decision by the League of Nations.