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A senior administration official confirmed to ABC News on Monday that, though a formal invitation has yet to be extended, Trump wants the hero dog to visit the White House. The New York Times first reported this detail.

What is unclear, however, is how the president will receive the dog -- if it shows up.

The Trumps are the only first family in modern times to not have any pets at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And the president, during a February rally in El Paso, Texas, said of having a dog, \"I don't know. Feels a little phony, phony to me. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, you should get a dog,’ ‘Why?’ ‘It’s good politically.’ I said, ‘Look, that’s not the relationship I have with my people.'\"

Working dogs are used in a variety of tactical situations at home and abroad, trained from a young age to complete oftentimes dangerous tasks, including sniffing out contraband and explosives, tracking missing persons and -- as was the case Sunday -- chasing enemy personnel.

David Petraeus, the former CIA director and retired Army general, told ABC News in 2011 that, \"by all measures of performance,\" military working dogs outperform \"any asset we have in our industry.\"

\"The capability they [the dogs] bring to the fight cannot be replicated by man or machine,\" he said at the time.

We have declassified a picture of the wonderful dog (name not declassified) that did such a GREAT JOB in capturing and killing the Leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi! pic.twitter.com/PDMx9nZWvw

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2019

The dog used in the al-Baghdadi raid is not the first to have been involved in a high-profile terrorist operation, nor was it the first Belgian Malinois.

In 2011, Cairo -- a Belgian Malinois attached to Navy SEAL Team 6 -- was credited with helping the elite team find and kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

ABC News' Luis Martinez and Jordyn Phelps contributed to this report.

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