Worldwide police and military dogs being trained in East Tennessee

 

LOUDON, Tenn. (WVLT)- Some of the world's best police dogs are trained right here in East Tennessee and as you can imagine they know a whole lot more than sit, stay and rollover.

Cobra Canine has been in Loudon for about a year and a half.

"We start off with families and from there we've worked up to doing military dogs, police dogs, sport dogs, personal protection dogs. We have some neat projects we do with the department of state," said Jeff Franklin, owner and lead trainer.

Franklin trains while his wife Ulrika handles operations.

"There's nothing you can't do with a dog," Ulrika said.

They season the canines to sniff out drugs, protect their handlers or just behave as pets.

"We also work with some prison systems on dogs detecting people, cells phones," said Jeff.

"There's no reason a police dog can't be social and somebody can't pet it ...the same for a civilian, they should be able to have their pet dogs and do as much as a police dog."

The animals don't always stay in the U.S., Franklin has been overseas guiding dogs in places like Paraguay and Ecuador.

"The whole theory behind it is to get the dogs to do their job in their own country so it doesn't get here."

Cobra Canine will train your dog, or you can buy one of theirs.

"We have young dogs, we have fully trained dogs, we have dogs that are suited to go into a personal protection scenario. We have dogs for police and sometimes military."

G oing for as much as 14-thousand dollars, these handpicked animals are bought by people all over the world.

"Sometimes we raise them most of the time we search the world."

So why East Tennessee?

"This is new for us, but it feels more like home than anywhere we've been. It's not only good for business but for quality of life, " said Ulrika.

And they plan to stay a while.

Franklin is a self-taught trainer and has been doing this sort of work for more than two decades.