I can tell you, I had many (I mean MANY) wardogs chase after bandit marksmen (even had one time when the dog pinned 3 archers), and it only happened to me once to get that dog killed… I don’t know if the bandit merksmen have low melee skill or the dogs high defence, but now I always feel free to just let the dogs out by themselves to kill the archers… I also sometimes use them against undead (skeleton archers, necromancers and zombies) and against any other fleeing enemy (orc, goblin, direwolf etc.)… The thing is that I only give my 2 billhook guys dogs, so they can flank the frontline and release the dogs (so they don’t close with the strong frontliners)…
Ever since the update with the wardogs, this method has worked amazing…