How a Former Navy Seal Turns an Attack Dog Into Your $100,000 New Best Friend

For a hefty price, Mike Ritland trains Personal Protection Dogs to keep your family safe.

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ELLIOTT ERWITT

Among elite professional dog trainers, the adage goes like this: “If your dog pees on the carpet, call Cesar Millan. For everything else, call Mike Ritland.” Ritland, a former Navy SEAL, is to dog training what a SEAL is to warfare: the most skilled, the most prestigious, the one called on to solve really big problems.

His company, Trikos International, trains two types of dog. The first is K-9s that work in conjunction with the United States military, various special operations units, and other national and regional government agencies. They sniff out bombs, drugs, and cadavers. They find escaped criminals, they control crowds, and they protect their human partners.

The dogs learn how to behave in every situation—indoors, outdoors, the car, the private jet, the supermarket, and the corner coffee shop.

The other is PPDs, short for personal protection dogs. These animals have two jobs: first, to act as 24-7 bodyguards for their owners and their families, detecting and assessing threats and responding appropriately; and second, to be, well, good dogs. The best PPDs are guided by intensive training, instinct, and a set of verbal and physical commands from their owners.

The perfect guard dog knows when to bark and when to bite, and it can turn back into a docile pet after an incident.
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Guard dogs, like safe rooms, bodyguards, and threat assessment reports, are part of a new wave of security measures taken by one-percenters. The repertoire of situations the dogs are taught to handle includes carjackings, home invasions, and random street attacks. To those and other scenarios they learn the correct reaction: when to merely alert and when to “neutralize the threat.”

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Most amazingly of all, after an incident they must be able to mellow out and morph back into a docile pet. If this sounds practically impossible, it is. Ritland estimates that around 1 percent of all dogs have this capability.

You may think you have seen a PPD. Possibly you may confuse one with a pet dog whose barking breaks your eardrums at the sound of the doorbell. Maybe the image that comes to mind is a slavering junkyard pit bull tethered to a chain. In both cases you would be wrong. To those who know human and canine behavior, the junkyard dog (like the human neighborhood bully) will probably turn tail and run if it meets a serious contender. A true PPD will often fight to the death.

The 39-year-old Ritland, who was born and raised in Waterloo, Iowa, founded Trikos International in 2012 after serving for 12 years as a SEAL (including combat tours during Operation Iraqi Freedom) and as a SEAL instructor. He says he has always had an affinity for dogs and a gift for communicating with them. Shifting his training skills from teaching humans to personal protection dogs was a natural progression.

A Belgian Malinois police dog.
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Ritland travels the world looking for candidates, but many of his best finds come from the Netherlands. Each dog’s lineage must be as scrupulously delineated as a Mayflower descendant’s. He prefers to work with three breeds: German shepherds, Dutch shepherds, and his favorite, the Belgian Malinois.

When full grown, a Malinois weighs around 60 pounds, and the breed is famous for hypervigilant, athletic behavior. If you have never seen one, visualize a German shepherd, shrink it down a bit, and torque it up to the red line in energy and aggression.

Ritland usually starts with a dog that is around three years old, physically and mentally mature. Asked why he does not begin younger, he replies, “Would you want to live with a 13-year-old Mike Tyson?” By the time he acquires the right dog from the right breeder, it has most likely been certified in high-level obedience. Getting a house pet with this kind of pretraining is like getting a dog with a PhD, but Ritland’s PPDs are just starting kindergarten.

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A Belgian Malinois puppy.
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Fully trained Trikos PPDs cost between $55,000 and $100,000. Ritland’s customers include celebrities and private individuals who face unique security concerns—because of where they live, what they do, or how big their bank accounts are.

Many demand anonymity, but some are happy to talk about Ritland and his dogs. “Working with Mike when he brought Ike to live with us at our farm was such a life-changing experience,” says the singer Wynonna Judd, who purchased her Trikos dog in 2016. “Ike and I have become inseparable, and having him as part of my personal and professional life has given me such a sense of peace.”

Ike and I have become inseparable, and having him as part of my personal and professional life has given me such a sense of peace. —Wynonna Judd, on her Ritland-trained Personal Protection Dog

There are other specialized PPD trainers in the U.S. and abroad, some of whom charge more than Trikos. Many keep a ready-to-go supply of animals in their kennels to meet demand. Ritland takes a different approach, personally training one dog at a time and matching it to the right owner.

Along with working with each PPD individually, Ritland lives with it in his home during training. Bringing a dog into his house, he says, helps replicate the type of environment it will eventually live in. The trainees learn how to behave in every situation—indoors, outdoors, the car, the private jet, the supermarket, and the corner coffee shop. They learn to bond with whole families and be gentle around children and visitors.

It’s early summer, and I have traveled to rural northeastern Texas to see Ritland at work. I park in the driveway of his sprawling ranch house, which is set way back from the state-of-the-art climate-controlled kennel that is home to the retired warrior dogs that Ritland’s charity shelters.

I’m not sure which door of the large house to enter, so I walk in through the garage. I haven’t gone 10 feet before I trip over a massive barbell on the floor. The number on the side reads 300 pounds. I knock on the door, and perhaps the most formidable-looking man I have ever seen answers. Ritland is shaped like a V; he has been out of the SEALs for years, but he still looks combat-ready.

Inside, however, the house could not seem less threatening. In addition to PPDs in training, Ritland has three of what he calls “personal dogs.” A favorite is Rico, now turning silver in the muzzle but still fit and alert. Dogs stretch out in the living room and hang around in the kitchen, waiting for a pat. The domestic (some might even say cute) scene is not surprising. On Ritland’s Facebook page there are photos of dogs in funny poses: wearing Star Wars costumes, balancing bacon strips on their noses, decked out in badass shades.

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Ritland’s dogs in costume.
Courtesy of Ritland

Soon after I arrive, it’s showtime: a private matinee just for me. I will get to see a PPD in training go through its paces. Ritland has donned a bite suit so well padded that it doubles his size. Working with his kennel assistant, he calls forth a large black dog that, like a fur-enrobed missile, crosses a big open field in about 30 seconds and launches itself at Ritland, fighting and biting him in a frenzy of flashing teeth and slobber and ultimately taking him to the ground.

Ritland fights back with all his strength and skill, lifting the dog off the ground and swinging it in circles, but even encased in the bite suit his face contorts in pain, and the sleeve of the suit is bloodied after the attack.

Mike Ritland and one of his dogs.
Courtesy of Mike Ritland

This kind of unswerving intensity is known as “heart,” the holy grail of personality traits that Ritland looks for in his canine candidates. Can a dog with this type of ferocity be suitable to live with a family and possibly have a tiny child put, say, a cardboard crown on its head for a birthday party and kiss it on the lips? The answer is a solid yes, but with conditions.

As careful as Ritland is to scrutinize the dogs, he also sizes up potential owners. He looks for personalities or dynamics that might prove too stressful or unpleasant for one of his dogs. He will not sell a dog to someone who sees it only as an expensive status symbol.

He will not sell a dog to someone who sees it only as an expensive status symbol.

Once Ritland is comfortable with a match, he moves the dog, and himself, into the new owner’s home. Although some clients are surprised to learn they will be hosting Ritland, it’s a vital part of the process. The animals must get used to the new owners; the owners have to learn to care for and command their powerful new charges. “My wife, daughter, and I enjoyed having Mike stay with us while he transitioned Quinto into our family,” says Harvey Allon, CEO of Braddock Financial, a Colorado investment firm. “Our smaller dogs were less thrilled, but Mike got them comfortable as well. As Quinto adapted, Mike backed away from interacting with him. We were sad to see Mike leave but happy to have Quinto all to ourselves.”

The sizable price tag of a Trikos PPD can create a unique set of challenges for Ritland. Some potential owners have unrealistic expectations. “They want a unicorn,” he says, a caped superhero combined with a kindly Mary Poppins. Ritland goes to great lengths to explain that he delivers a dog—granted, a very highly trained dog, but still a dog.

Ritland and puppies.
Courtesy of Mike Ritland

Canines, he points out, do not think the way people do. They are simple association creatures that learn to link a noise or a gesture with a reward. Even Ritland’s most sophisticated training rests on this fact.

So how does one get the most from these amazing animals? Ritland tells owners that they must respect, protect, and care for their dogs and provide a stable environment. But most of all they must make an emotional connection. A dog does not know that you just wrote a check for $100,000 and now expect it to love you. And why would it lay down its life for you if it doesn’t even like you? So you must do what humans and canines have been doing for ages: bond.

This story appears in the October 2017 issue of Town & Country.

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