Military dogs are awe-inspiring creatures, especially when attached to elite troops like the Navy SEALs. All day, the media have been in a frenzy over the fact that a military dog accompanied SEAL Team 6 on its mission to wax Osama bin Laden.
But let’s kill a misleading meme before it spreads further: Navy SEAL dogs don’t have titanium teeth.
A piece in The Daily took a good, detailed sniff around the German shepherds and Belgian Malinois that accompany special operations forces on patrol. But overshadowing all the cool radios and cameras strapped to the dogs is the claim that their “razor-sharp teeth are made of titanium,” at a cost of $2,000 per chomper. Getting bit by them “is like being stabbed four times at once with a bone crusher,” one dog trainer told The Daily. To quote enhanced-grille expert Pall Wall, that got the Internet going nuts.
There’s one problem. If the dogs do have Kanye teeth, it’s a sign something’s wrong with them.
“It would not be possible for them to use titanium teeth to make them even more aggressive,” says Jeff Franklin, owner of Cobra Canine in Virginia Beach. “They’re not as stable as a regular tooth would be, and they’re much more likely to come out” during a biting.
The only reason to have titanium teeth? Medical reasons, he says, like “if a dog breaks a tooth … it’s the same as a crown for a human.”
Franklin should know. Cobra Canine got a $550,000 contract in April from the U.S. Special Operations Command to train military working dogs for Naval Special Warfare Group 2. (He says it’s been “three years” since he’s worked with the very secretive “DevGru,” or Team 6.) That’s a re-up from the past two years, when he’s had contracts for dog training with the command that paid out $470,000 each.
Indeed, the command’s requirements for dog teeth don’t seem to account for the circumstances that would lead to grille enhancements. “All four canine teeth must be present and must not be weakened by notching, enamel hyperplasia or abnormal, excessive wear,” it reads.
In other words, if for some reason you see a SEAL dog with light glistening from its titanium teeth, your proper reaction is pity for the creature. “It’s a detriment, not a help,” Franklin says. On the other hand, if you’re coming into close contact with the jaws of a SEAL’s dog, you’re in for a lot of trouble from his very deadly master.
