By KEN MAGUIRE

EMBOROUGH, England (AP) — Scream all you want, but Lobo isn’t letting go.

Related Articles

With little progress after phone calls and talks, Ukraine’s allies hit Russia with new sanctions

Iran’s supreme leader rejects US stance on uranium enrichment

Today in History: May 20, United States detonates first hydrogen bomb

After US cuts funding, WHO chief defends $2.1B budget request by comparing it with cost of war

Radio calls asked tugs for help 45 seconds before Mexican ship hit Brooklyn Bridge, officials say

The young German shepherd has chomped into the arm of a would-be attacker wearing a padded suit at K9 Protector in southwest England.

A command later, Lobo is back at the feet of Alaster Bly and awaiting his next instruction.

“I describe them as pets with a toolkit built into them. A toolkit that you hope you’re never going to use,” said Bly, K9 Protector co-owner.

Expensive protection dogs like Lobo have been in demand among professional athletes to guard against burglars who target wealthy homes often as part of sophisticated crime rings. Athletes are particularly vulnerable while they’re away at games.

“He will end up in somebody’s home with high-net worth that is potentially at risk from more than your opportunist burglar,” Bly said of Lobo, who costs $60,000 and boasts a Bavarian bloodline that is “second to none.”

The lengthy list of athletes whose residences have been hit includes Premier League stars Jack Grealish and Alexander Isak. England cricket captain Ben Stokes’ home was burglarized while he was playing in Pakistan.

It’s becoming a major problem in the United States, too, with former NFL cornerback Richard Sherman a recent example.

The homes of Kansas City Chiefs teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce were burglarized in October as part of a wave of break-ins that also targeted Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. Seven Chilean men were charged in connection with those burglaries, as well as the break-in at Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis’ home, where nearly $1.5 million in cash and valuables were stolen.

After consulting the FBI, the NBA drew up guidance for players.

One of the recommendations: “Utilize dogs for home protection.”

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo attacks a pretend criminal during a training session at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Which breed is best?

While almost any dog can provide some deterrence, protection-dog providers offer breeds like German shepherd, Belgian Malinois, Rottweiler, Doberman and Cane Corso.

Bly and his wife, K9 Protector co-owner Sian Bly, work predominantly with German shepherds.

“They are the most proven dogs at being family dogs,” Alaster Bly said.

They begin to differentiate early on which pups show potential.

“If we’ve got a puppy that’s really confident, is chasing a rag, biting hold of the rag, and their food drive is high, that’s a good starting point,” Sian Bly said. “We look at how competitive they are with their siblings, as well. You’re looking for quite a strong dog.”

Dogs that don’t make the cut might get routed to prison service or police duty.

“You can’t place a dog with young kids that’s nervous or that the temperament isn’t 100%,” she said.

Protection dogs are expensive

The handful of K9 Protector dogs that reach “high-threat environment” status cost up to $100,000.

It can take a couple of years to train for all sorts of scenarios.

“It’s vast — the ability to deal with four intruders at once, vehicle carjacking tactics, being acceptant of multi-handlers,” Alaster Bly said. “Husband, wife, nanny, housekeeper, estate manager all being able to handle that dog in an equal way in a threat scenario, and the dog still responding in the same way — is very different to a pet-level-trained dog with protection training.”

Clients must be a good match, though.

Sian Bly said if they think a buyer “might use the dog in the wrong way, then we don’t sell them the dog. It doesn’t matter about the finances.”

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo listens to owner Alaster Bly at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Between 10-15% of their clients are professional athletes and they typically require nondisclosure agreements, as do the actors and singers who come calling.

They sell about two or three dogs per month. When the economy is bad and crime increases — demand is higher. Winter months see more sales and the pandemic period of 2020-21 was “the busiest we’ve ever been,” Sian Bly said.

UFC fighter Aspinall picks a German shepherd

UFC heavyweight Tom Aspinall added a protection dog to his family after moving to a new house. The Manchester native posted a video about it.

“I’m not here all the time. I just wanted someone else kind of looking after the family, as well as me, even when I’m here,” Aspinall said of his German shepherd.

U.S. soccer midfielder Tyler Adams opted for a Rottweiler from Total K9, the North Yorkshire company that provided Aspinall’s dog.

Tottenham midfielder James Maddison got a 145-pound Cane Corso from Leicestershire-based Chaperone K9, which also counts Grealish as a client.

Grealish’s mansion was burglarized just after Christmas in 2023 while the Manchester City midfielder was playing a game at Everton. Family members called police when they heard noises and after Grealish’s Belgian Malinois and Cockapoo reportedly started barking.

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo awaits commands at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Grealish later called it “a traumatic experience for all of us, I am just so grateful that nobody was hurt.”

Tips for home security

The NBA memo urged removing online real estate listings that show interiors.

Some stars post their protection dogs on social media along with the pets’ names — but they probably shouldn’t.

“There is nothing more off-putting to a dog than being called by its own name when you’re breaking into the home,” Alaster Bly said.

The Blys use German commands, which buyers must learn.

On K9 Protector’s website, former long-distance runner Mo Farah, a four-time Olympic champion, described turning to a protection dog after his home was burglarized despite an alarm system, video coverage and 24-hour security patrols.

Intruders at Burrow’s house eluded manned security at his property while he was playing a Monday Night Football game at Dallas in December. The criminal complaint on the Chilean crew said they liked to approach from “a wooded or dark area.”

Knowing the rules

Under the UK’s “Guard Dogs Act,” someone capable of controlling a guard dog must be at the premises, and a notice must be posted at the entrance about the dog.

Technically, there are scenarios that could result in criminal prosecution of dog owners in Britain — even in burglaries.

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo rests at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

The National Association of Security Dog Users “does not promote the use of dogs as personal/family protection dogs and issues no certification or training courses in relation to this type of dog,” said Roger Flett, a NASDU director.

Samantha Gaines of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals warned against the “glamorization” of painful ear-cropping on breeds like Doberman and Cane Corso. The procedure is prohibited in England and Wales, but it’s legal to import them that way.

UK burglaries are decreasing

It’s unknown if break-ins at wealthy homes are increasing, but statistics for England and Wales show residential burglaries overall are decreasing.

From the year ending March 2018 to the year ending September 2024, there was a 42% drop, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Just a small percentage of burglaries get solved, however. Only in late 2022 did police chiefs commit to responding to all break-ins.

Alaster Bly, a former police officer, said it’s not just about burglaries. A CEO of a company might be facing a threat, or a person might be dealing with a stalker.

“There are life-changing incidents that take place regularly,” he said. “The array of problems and crime that’s going on in the UK at the moment keeps us busy.”

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

It was a chilly December day when Ian Bartoszek and a team of other biologists hiked into the wilderness outside Naples to track pythons. They were homing in on Loki, a 13-foot, 52-pound male. But something didn’t feel right.

Normally, if things go well, they find Loki shacked up with a big fertile female during breeding season. The goal is to remove and euthanize as many of the invasive snakes as possible — taking out a female full of 70 or so egg follicles is like removing 71 snakes from the ecosystem.

As they got closer, they prepared to wrangle multiple big snakes, but when they finally spotted him, he was alone, motionless, and his neck and head were buried under pine needles.

They soon realized he was dead.

“It was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, stop. Don’t step on anything. Let’s look around,’” Bartoszek said. “We went into ‘CSI Crime Scene’ mode.”

“First off, it was a little emotional, because he was dead,” Bartoszek said. “This was one of my favorite scout snakes.”

Bartoszek and the team of biologists at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida have been tracking 40 or so male scout snakes since 2013. This breeding season they removed 130 adult snakes totaling 6,500 pounds. Nearly all of that success hinges on radio-tracking male scout snakes who lead them to big females in areas where a human would never spot them.

The Conservancy had been tracking Loki for six years, and he’d led them to some very rotund females. “He was a good scout,” Bartoszek said. “He was a good player. You never like to lose an MVP.”

When they brushed away the pine needles, Loki’s head and neck were gnawed off. There were no discernible tracks, and he was half-buried, something biologists call a cache.

“Caching is fairly specific to cats, and it looked like a cat cache. We were excited to find out if it was a panther or a bobcat,” Bartoszek said.

Previously, biologists have found several cached pythons in nearby Big Cypress National Preserve, but they had no proof of what kind of wild cat had killed them — the area is home to both bobcats and much larger, and endangered Florida panthers.

Bartoszek needed help to figure out what had happened. He called in former coworker and wild cat expert Dave Shindle, who now works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the coordinator for Florida panther recovery.

Shindle came to the cache site with a video trail cam, knowing that since the kill was fresh, the cat would likely be back. When he saw the snake’s carcass, he felt strongly that the killer was a cat — the gnawed neck was textbook feline caching behavior.

Pythons the size of Loki routinely eat bobcats (Bartoszek often finds bobcat remains in snakes’ digestive tracts during necropsies), and the Conservancy has documented a 15-foot snake swallowing a 77-pound deer, an animal three times the size of a bobcat.

These bobcat claws were found in the digestive tracts of invasive Burmese pythons during necropsies performed by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. (Courtesy Conservancy of Southwest Florida)

Additionally, studies of bobcats on tree islands in the Everglades suggest that the more pythons there are in an area, the fewer bobcats use it, either because snakes eat them, or because there’s less prey for the cats due to competition from pythons.

It’s safe to say that pythons kill prey larger than themselves, but so do bobcats: They have been filmed tackling deer, especially young ones.

As Shindle set up the camera, the biologists started making bets on whether a bobcat or panther killed Loki. Bartoszek was betting a panther had done it. “It’s such a big python, I couldn’t really see a bobcat killing a 50-pound snake.” But panthers are exceedingly rare. They would soon find out who the killer was.

A predator, revealed

Shindle retrieved the camera the next day, and immediately spotted the killer on the video.

The grainy footage shows an approximately 25-pound bobcat gingerly walking across a log to return to its python stash. The cat seems nervous, cautious, constantly sniffing to pick up on the scent of the humans who’d been there the day before.

A still frame from a trail-cam video taken of the bobcat that likely killed Loki, a 13-foot, 52-pound male python scout snake. The bobcat is on a log and the python is at the bottom of the frame. (Courtesy Conservancy of Southwest Florida)

Bartoszek was impressed. “I like animals that punch above their weight class,” he said.

“That’s the last we saw of the bobcat. We just left the carcass there. Who knows if he came back.”

There’s no way to know with 100% certainty how Loki died. Maybe he drew his last breath before the cat found him. But bobcats are not known as scavengers. And Bartoszek had tracked and seen Loki a few days prior, and he was in top condition. “He was a prime specimen,” said Bartoszek. The conclusion: In all likelihood, a 25-pound bobcat killed a 13-foot, 52-pound python.

Leveraging the cold

A key factor in the snake’s demise, aside from the cat’s courage, may have been the cold weather.

Cold snaps, such as the one that occurred a few days before they found the snake, slow cold-blooded pythons down. They’re less able to flee, less able to defend themselves, they’re “off their game,” as Bartoszek put it. “I think he just got cold-stunned, and the cat was opportunistic and took him down,” Bartoszek said.

“This is a good sign for the Everglades that our native wildlife are fighting back,” he said. In fact bobcats may see pythons as a valuable food source if the conditions align. Successful predators put patterns together on how their prey behaves. It could be that this bobcat, and maybe others, have deduced that cold weather gives them an advantage over an otherwise deadly snake.

Bartoszek and his team have started to anticipate losing a scout snake each year during cold spells, maybe to a bobcat, maybe a panther, maybe a bear.

Earlier this year they were tracking an 11-foot, 35-pound snake named Pacino in the Picayune Strand State Forest after another cold snap. “We were out in the forest going, I wonder which of our animals could have got predated?” Sure enough, they found Pacino not only dead but almost entirely eaten.

The scene was messy — grass and ferns trampled. And there wasn’t much left of Pacino. “It was almost like a grenade went off and there was pretty much just the skull (of the snake),” said Bartoszek. Also, the site smelled like a bear.

“He looked like he was killed by a bear, but I can’t tell you 100% if he was. I don’t think he was killed by the cold, because we really didn’t get frost. I think it was a similar situation. He was exposed, and you could tell a bear got this python.”

The half-buried body of Loki, one of the better scout snakes that the Conservancy of Southwest Florida had in the field. (Courtesy Conservancy of Southwest Florida)

Bartoszek sees a potential pattern emerging. “Animals are likely stunned, if you will, for lack of a better word, and a predator takes advantage. In fact, the native mammals might actively look for those vulnerabilities during a cold snap.”

Invasive Burmese pythons ended up in Florida wilderness via the exotic pet trade of the 1970s and ’80s. Escaped or released pets thrived and reproduced, first at the southern tip of the Everglades, but now as far north as Lake Okeechobee and the suburbs of Fort Myers. In some areas where the snakes are more established, mammal sightings are down 80% to 99%.

Bartoszek suspects that Florida panthers occasionally prey upon pythons, but there’s no proof yet. And there are only 200 or so Florida panthers in the wild. The fact that bobcats are widespread — the National Park Service said they have a “healthy population” in South Florida — and potentially learning to prey upon even large pythons is a good sign, Bartoszek said.

In warm weather, some bobcats have found other ways to put Burmese pythons on the menu.

Wildlife biologists in Florida documented a bobcat raiding a python nest back in 2021.

The cat returned several times when the massive 115-pound female mother snake was gone, snacking on eggs and caching the nest. When mamma came back, the cat actually faced off with her and took a swipe, but kept her distance as the snake coiled to strike.

The Conservancy loses approximately 10% of their 40 or so scout snakes each season, some to alligator predation, or sometimes the team will find the radio tracker with no snake. “We’ll never know what took them down,” said Bartoszek.

With the documentation of this bobcat cache, it looks like the tables can turn, at least once in a while. “As we have more (radio-tagged Burmese pythons) out there and we follow them longer-term, we see more of Florida native wildlife fighting back,” he said.

“Yeah, we were a little bummed that we lost a valuable scout. But we were also saying, ‘All right, score one for the home team.’”

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6. 

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN

Home Depot doesn’t expect to raise prices because of tariffs, saying it has spent years diversifying the sources for the goods on its shelves.

Related Articles

Elon Musk says he’ll still be Tesla CEO in 5 years’ time

US stocks drift as S&P 500 flirts with its first drop in 7 days

Is the Trump administration’s plan to tax all Chinese-built ships a good idea?

Biotechnology company Regeneron buying 23andMe for $256 million

US spring homebuying season has its weakest start in five years

Billy Bastek, executive vice president of merchandising, said during a conference call on Tuesday that Home Depot’s suppliers have shifted sourcing across several countries and that the company doesn’t expect any single country outside of the U.S. will represent more than 10% of its purchases 12 months from now.

“We don’t see broad based price increases for our customers at all going forward,” he said.

Other companies, domestic and foreign, have warned customers that price hikes are on the way due to a trade war kicked off by the U.S.

Walmart said last week that it has already raised prices and will have to do so again in the near future. Late Monday, Subaru of America said it would raise prices on some of its most popular models by as much as $2,000.

President Donald Trump lambasted Walmart, saying on social media over the weekend that the retail giant should “eat” the additional costs created by his tariffs.

As Trump has jacked up import taxes, he has tried to assure a skeptical public that foreign producers would pay for those taxes and that retailers and automakers would absorb the additional expenses. Most economists are deeply skeptical of those claims and have warned that the trade penalties would worsen inflation.

During the first quarter, Home Depot’s revenue climbed as customers spent slightly more on smaller home projects.

A number of U.S. companies have lowered or pulled financial guidance for investors as tariffs launched by the the Trump administration scramble world trade but on Tuesday, Home Depot stuck by earlier projections of sales growth at around 2.8%.

Shares of the Atlanta company dipped slightly on Tuesday.

Revenue rose to $39.86 billion from $36.42 billion a year earlier, beating the $39.3 billion that analysts polled by FactSet expected.

Sales at stores open at least a year, a key gauge of a retailer’s health, edged down 0.3%. In the U.S., comparable store sales climbed 0.2%.

Wall Street anticipated a 0.1% decline in same-store sales.

Customer transactions rose 2.1% in the quarter. The amount shoppers spent climbed to $90.71 per average ticket from $90.68 in the prior-year period.

“Our first quarter results were in line with our expectations as we saw continued customer engagement across smaller projects and in our spring events,” Home Depot Chair and CEO Ted Decker said in a statement.

Home improvement retailers like Home Depot have been dealing with homeowners putting off bigger projects because of increased borrowing costs and lingering concerns about inflation.

The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Sales of previously occupied homes have dropped as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discouraged home shoppers.

Existing home sales fell 5.9% in March from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million units, the National Association of Realtors said. The March sales decline was the largest monthly drop since November 2022, and marks the slowest sales pace for the month of March going back to 2009.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

“One of the central problems for Home Depot is the skittish housing market,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a statement. “While last quarter was robust, home sales declined by 3.1% year-over-year this quarter as consumers were deterred from moving by continued high interest rates and growing economic uncertainty. This lack of recovery makes it difficult to drive home improvement spending.”

For the three months ended May 4, Home Depot Inc. earned $3.43 billion, or $3.45 per share. A year earlier the Atlanta-based company earned $3.6 billion, or $3.63 per share.

Stripping out certain items, earnings were $3.56 per share. Wall Street was calling for earnings of $3.60 per share.

By TARA COPP, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is expected to announce on Tuesday the concept he wants for his future Golden Dome missile defense program — and while it would not be the most expensive option that the Pentagon had offered, it would still cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and take years to make a reality.

If realized, the system would mark the first time that the U.S. would put weapons in space, which could be fired to destroy an incoming missile during flight.

Trump also is expected to announce that Gen. Michael Guetlein, who currently serves as the vice chief of space operations, will be responsible for overseeing Golden Dome’s progress.

Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground and space-based capabilities that are able to detect and stop missiles at all four major stages of a potential attack: detecting and destroying them before a launch, intercepting them in their earliest stage of flight, stopping them midcourse in the air, or halting them in the final minutes as they descend toward a target.

Related Articles

Elon Musk says he will cut back on political spending after heavily backing Trump in 2024

Trump officials set new requirements for COVID vaccines in healthy adults and children

Races for Philly district attorney and Pittsburgh mayor take center stage in Pennsylvania’s primary

Trump comes to the Capitol to try to persuade a divided GOP to unify around his big tax cuts bill

Trump alleges ‘genocide’ in South Africa. White Afrikaner farmers reject that

For the last several months, Pentagon planners have been developing options — which a U.S. official described as medium, high and “extra high” choices, based on their cost — that include space-based interceptors.

The administration picked the “high” version, with an initial cost ranging between $30 billion and $100 billion, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail plans that have not been made public.

The difference in the three versions is largely based on how many satellites and sensors in space would be purchased, and for the first time, space-based interceptors.

The White House and the Pentagon didn’t immediately respond to requests for seeking comment.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this month that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $542 billion over the next 20 years. Trump has requested an initial $25 billion for the program in his proposed tax break bill now moving through Congress.

The Pentagon has warned for years that the newest missiles developed by China and Russia are so advanced that updated countermeasures are necessary. Golden Dome’s added satellites and interceptors — where the bulk of the program’s cost is — would be focused on stopping those advanced missiles early on or in the middle of their flight.

The space-based weapons envisioned for Golden Dome “represent new and emerging requirements for missions that have never before been accomplished by military space organizations,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, head of the U.S. Space Force, told lawmakers at a hearing Tuesday.

China and Russia have put offensive weapons in space, such as satellites with abilities to disable critical U.S. satellites, which can make the U.S. vulnerable to attack.

But there’s no money for the project yet, and the program overall is “still in the conceptual stage,” newly confirmed Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told senators Tuesday.

While the president picked the concept he wanted, the Pentagon is still developing the requirements that Golden Dome will need to meet — which is not the way new systems are normally developed.

The Pentagon and U.S. Northern Command are still drafting what is known as an initial capabilities document, the U.S. official said. That is how Northern Command, which is responsible for homeland defense, identifies what it will need the system to do.

The U.S. already has many missile defense capabilities, such as the Patriot missile batteries that the U.S. has provided to Ukraine to defend against incoming missiles as well as an array of satellites in orbit to detect missile launches. Some of those existing systems will be incorporated into Golden Dome.

Trump directed the Pentagon to pursue the space-based interceptors in an executive order during the first week of his presidency.