A few years ago, in Bozeman, Montana, a brain surgeon and his wife were walking through a farmers’ market when they came across a booth selling dogs. The breeder, called Svalinn, touted them as a one-of-a-kind hybrid: military-grade protection dogs with elite danger-sensing instincts but the warmth and temperament of a conventional family pet. The surgeon, Regis Haid, took a closer look at the dogs, which did indeed seem magnificent, intelligent, and powerful. Then he saw the cost: at least $150,000 each.

Haid’s wife, Mary Ellen, was interested. He told her, “There’s no way I’m gonna spend that kind of money. Are you out of your mind?” Many stories about Svalinn dogs begin this way. The Haids couldn’t stop thinking about the animals they’d seen, and before long, they drove to Svalinn’s training facility. Each dog is an undisclosed mix of Dutch shepherd, German shepherd, and Belgian Malinois. “They put the dogs through all these obstacle courses and things,” Haid recalled recently. “I was in the military, I had an Air Force scholarship to med school, and I’ve hunted. These dogs — they’re like humans.” Many high-dollar protection dogs are nothing but menace; Haid approached one of the Svalinn dogs, who nuzzled his hand. He and Mary Ellen now own two.

Svalinn says that it sells no more than 20 dogs a year, and only about 350 exist around the world. One of the owners, Stephen Mazzola, an airline pilot, read about Svalinn in Mountain Outlaw magazine shortly before moving to the Bitterroot Valley, near the Idaho-Montana border, and scheduled a visit to the breeder. He and his wife, Chris, a retired nurse anesthetist, fell in love with one of the biggest males available, a “door kicker” they named Jet.

Mazzola, who used to fly F-16s, was stunned by Jet’s abilities. “I feel like we have a gentle Navy SEAL in the house,” he says. “I find myself giving a command and going, ‘Holy cow, that really works.’” He describes standing at a restaurant counter with Jet hovering at his side, “looking the other direction, where all the people are. That’s an automatic thing with them. The training kind of morphs into the instinct to protect the family.” He pauses. “It just — it turns into a very emotional thing.”

Svalinn’s founder, Kim Greene, did not set out to create a luxury object. In the aughts, she was living in Nairobi with her then-husband, Jeff, a former Green Beret whose business provided private security to diplomats and NGOs. Nairobi had a carjacking problem, and after Kim gave birth to twins, Jeff asked her to carry a gun. Kim declined, feeling that if she were attacked, she would be unlikely to use it. Instead, she got a pair of Dutch shepherds named Banshee and Briggs. The dogs were “hot,” says Greene, ready to jump through a car window and maul an attacker at the slightest provocation. They were weapons, not pets, “and kind of pains in the ass.”

In Nairobi the Greenes had a sideline breeding Rhodesian ridgebacks for the expat community, and they also sold dogs to the U.S. They noticed that people became more interested in tactical K-9s after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which featured a Belgian Malinois named Cairo. The Greenes moved back to the U.S. in 2013, intent on creating a market for beasts that could rip out an attacker’s trachea yet also function as pets.

They established Svalinn, which in Nordic mythology refers to a shield protecting the world, at a former equestrian-training facility outside Livingston in Montana’s Paradise Valley. (The couple has since divorced, and Kim Greene now runs the business.)

Approaching the site recently, amid panoramic views of snowcapped mountains, I see signs warning of danger ahead, then........

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