SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—Connor Rafferty was bitten yet again by canine “Ditto,” though he’s not shy when it happens.
Wearing a padded safety suit, Rafferty, a professional “bite trainer” at K-9 Defense in Scottsdale, Arizona, waited for Ditto to make another go at him on July 11.
And Ditto, a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, was quick to oblige on command.
Snarling, the 65-pound canine lunged forward, sinking its teeth into Mr. Rafferty’s shielded left arm.
The dog kept tugging and pulling on the dense fabric of Rafferty’s bite suit until Chris Kamma gave the command to stop.
Mr. Rafferty then removed the suit and displayed the purple marks and bruises on his arm, some of which were old wounds.
“I’ve been doing it for over a decade now,” he said. “I don’t get quite the same adrenalin rush I used to.”
“There’s still some concern. You’ve got a dog coming at you full speed—it’s intimidating. Depending on the dog, it doesn’t always feel great inside the suit.”
It’s all in a day’s work training high-performance dogs like Ditto, said Mr. Rafferty, who believes in having a trained protection dog as a first or added layer of security.
As California Goes...
In crime-ridden Los Angeles County, protection dogs are in high demand among the more affluent residents.According to the Los Angeles Times, some are willing to spend $150,000 on a dog.
“I think there’s just more people aware. I think people are interested,” said Mr. Kamma, K9 Defense’s business development director.
“We do provide a lot of protection dogs for civilians. Most of the time, it’s women and families. We only sell the highest level of dog to families for personal protection.”
In less turbulent times, an anthropomorphic 1980s public service mascot named “McGruff the Crime Dog” urged people to be alert and “take a bite out of crime.”
Decades later, wealthy Angelinos appear to be taking the vintage National Crime Prevention Council message to heart with worsening local crime statistics, sparing no expense on personal protection dogs.
The nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California reported violent crime in California increased by 6 percent between 2020 and 2021.
Aggravated assaults rose by 8.9 percent, accounting for 67 percent of reported violent crimes in 2021, while murder and rape spiked by nearly 8 percent during the pandemic.
“California’s violent crime rate in 2020 was higher than the national rate of 387 per 100,000 residents and ranked 16th nationwide,” the report added.
Given these numbers, “I see more interest” in protection dogs, Mr. Rafferty told The Epoch Times. “There’s always been that market, but it’s growing. I think there are multiple reasons—crime rates, people feeling more responsible for their safety.”
Mr. Kamma said most clients focus on “proactive” protection against crime.
“Maybe someone in the family isn’t fluent with firearms. It’s an extra measure [of protection],” he said. “Anyone coming to me from fear doesn’t know what they’re getting into—a new lifestyle with a dog.”
Other factors are driving the trend, including efforts to defund police, social media exposure, and states with restrictive firearms laws causing people to seek out other means of personal protection.
Does Your Dog Bite?
“There’s a strong psychological effect these dogs have on people. That’s part of what makes them such a great deterrent. We work with many law enforcement dogs,” Mr. Rafferty said.Canine trainers and breeders share different viewpoints and preferences in protection dogs. Even so, Mr. Kamma said that most dogs won’t “make the cut,” genetically speaking, to perform at a high level of protection.
Some dogs are nervous by disposition, physically or mentally slow, skittish and hesitant when told to bite.
Other dogs might be good at biting on command, but could be better at mixing socially with family members or other dogs.
“By genetic rarity, maybe one out of 100 dogs coming here will fit the bill. Less than 1 percent of dogs will fit that bill,” Mr. Kamma said.
Each dog sold at K9 Defense is the product of 2 1/2 years of team development effort. And only high-level people can develop a dog to that extent—“maybe one or two dogs at a time.”
“You might get into a year into a dog’s development and decide the dog won’t make the cut,” Mr. Kamma said.
The main issue in a protection dog’s training is will the canine work and do what it’s told.
“For us, [workability] is the priority,” Mr. Kamma said. “After that, does the dog have everything it takes to make it to a protection role?”
About half of K9 Defense dogs are for law enforcement clients, though to make it into a civilian home, the dog “needs everything to make it capable of being a police dog.”
“It also needs all the brakes to slow it down. For us, the protection dogs we put out, we want them to make decisions only if we tell them to. To be super social and alert, but only if I tell them to do so—when I tell them it’s game time.”
Dogs and ‘Unicorns’
The elite dogs are known as “unicorns,” which display the best of all genetic worlds, including physical stamina, obedience, and sociability.The company purchases dogs from traditional breeders and canine cloning services to provide an exact genetic duplicate of the most desirable traits of the DNA host.
Cloning is a costly process, Mr. Kamma said, so it’s less common in the protection dog industry.
The average cost of a protection dog runs from $40,000 to $60,000, and even higher depending on the breed and level of training required.
“In general, there needs to be an awareness among buyers” regarding the type of dog they’re buying, Mr. Kamma said. “We’re seeing a lot of dogs that look good in training but are unreliable in real life.
“A lot of dogs are passed on as protection dogs. They won’t do anything when it comes down to it.”
K9 Defense works with eight or nine kennels in Holland, purchasing many prospective dogs for their police and civilian clients.
Out of hundreds of dogs, they'll test 40 or 50, though only four will make the grade as a protection dog.
For this reason, the dog must be strong, fast, obedient, friendly, and willing to bite consistently without fear.
“Our dogs consistently bite real humans—'bad guys’—at work, consistently throughout the week,” Mr. Kamma said.
“If we put a dog out, it’s going to work. If they need to engage, they’re going to engage—without thinking about it. Without worrying about the environment or circumstantial things. It’s out there to work.”
Breeding Shows
At Rock Of Ages Kennel in Illinois, also home to the Personal Protection Dog Association (PPDA), master dog trainer Michael “Gypsy” Stratten said interest in protection dogs should continue to increase in step with rising crime rates.
“People want protectors. They want their dogs to bite and save them if and when necessary,” said Mr. Stratten, who’s been training protection dogs professionally for the past half-century.
His wife, Lori Berg, founded the PPDA. The couple are co-authors of “An Owners Guide to Raising Your Pet Protector,” a book that distinguishes between training a police dog and a personal protection dog.
As a rule, Mr. Stratten said it’s best to obtain a dog for personal protection from a reputable breeder rather than a pound or rescue shelter.
“It’s the breeder that’s most important,” he said. “If you go to a shelter, you don’t know the background of the dog, and you don’t know the background of the dog’s parents. You don’t know why he ended up in a shelter.”
“The problem with going to the pound is you don’t know anything about the dog. I would rather go to a breeder because a breeder knows the dog.”
Ideally, he said training a protection dog is best when it’s still a puppy. Being a pack animal, it will then learn to know its master at an early age.
“He needs to know who lives in the house. He needs to love everyone who lives in the house,” Mr. Stratten said.
“Do not socialize him with people who don’t live with you. His instinct will kick in: ‘You’re not part of my pack. You’re not part of my territory. You’re not supposed to be here.’ ”
Though all dogs offer some protection, Mr. Stratten said German Shepherds are considered “universal” as a high-performance protection dog.
Giant schnauzers, Dobermans, terriers, and also good as watchdogs, he said.
“That’s the bottom line—watchdogs, and you build from there. Biting cannot be your number one concern.”
“If your dog bites anyone, and it’s not in the service of protecting you or your home, you are liable,” he added.
Saving Lives
Like an alarm system, a protection dog gives the owner peace of mind. There’s also more to security than the ability to bite an assailant.Mr. Stratten said he uses a defensive protocol based on four criteria: the dog’s ability to raise the alarm exposing a threat, to challenge an intruder, to directly display aggression by growling and baring teeth at an intruder, and engaging the criminal—biting when necessary.
“Human beings, genetically, do not enjoy being eaten,” he said. "Can you imagine how many millions of people over time have been saved by a dog barking—alarming? A dog bite has saved many more lives.
Mr. Kamma also questioned the reliability of rescue dogs as protectors to obey and bite when called upon.
These dogs likely have insecurities and other behavioral issues, like uncontrollable aggression, resulting from a “state of mind of self-preservation.”
“Ideally, we want a dog that understands the human is the prey, and this is the game. They will then do that behavior from that state of mind,” Mr. Kamma said.
He said it’s rare that a rescue dog will meet the standard of a high-performance canine. So it’s not unusual for someone serious about family security to spend $150,000 to $250,000 on a protection dog if they have the money.
“Can you buy a dog for $20,000? Sure. But for personal protection, we’re looking for a unicorn that is so capable on one end with the capability for violence. But also, one who’s completely capable on the other end—of integrating into a family home,” he said.
“We need those complete opposites in one dog—and that’s extremely rare. That’s the unicorn dog.”
