I am kind of amused by the constant mention of war dogs. I cannot imagine a dog that is trained well enough that it will follow a stranger into a dark alien smelling hole, attack with fiendish intelligence Undeads and Monsters and sacrifice itself for the life of the party. If I GM you would need to raise the dog yourself and pass some checks on dog training if you ever wanted to expect such behavior.
Moreover, dogs and wolves are stated up as way too powerful in all editions of D&D. If I was to pit even a Mastiff against a trained fighter in heavy armor with a decent weapon, I would expect to fighter to win 19 times out of 20.
I guess this goes to show that one groups smart strategy is another groups silly attempt at rules abuse.