Fletcher Cox: From Super Bowl champion to dog trainer

The K-9 Academy where, you know, we go on, you know, my off days to train dogs and kind of spend time with the dogs and, you know, get them, you know, sharpened up. The biggest part about having a good dog is, you know, being a good handler, you know, kind of correlates with football. You know, you have long nights and they have long training sessions where they just want to come home and lay down or eat some food. And right now, it's this grimy part of the season. You just try to balance that time between taking care of the body and dogs can't eat if I don't have a job. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Fletcher Cox, defensive tackle. This is my day off. Anybody know I love my dogs? So we got five dogs now. Cardi is a miniature Yorkie. Philly's a French bulldog. Sway is a miniature golden doodle. And you got Jack and Blue are both Belgian Malinois. They need a lot of attention, a lot of love. And the more you love on them, the more they do for you. Those Malinois, they're not pets. They're working dogs. Working dogs, for the general knowledge, will be any type of dog that works, whether it be by its nose through scent or protection work through bite. and asked him to help with his personal protection dog. He didn't have guys that knew how to take the dogs and work the dogs. And that's the thing, you know, I wanna go have fun, I wanna go do bite work and, you know, things outside of football and hang around, you know, really good people, train dogs and, you know, just talk about things besides football is what, you know, what I really love about training those dogs. Like, you know, like today we'll get a chance to go and, you know, it's an off day, so we'll get a chance to go do some training with Amir. When the season comes around, he doesn't get to work the dogs often. We bring the dogs down and we give them some exercises. We get that energy out. As soon as we get there and roll into the gate, the dogs know where they are. Their attitude's gonna change. Do a couple of bites with a couple of dogs, probably take turns doing bites. With Blue, he's pretty easy. He's pretty more clear-minded than Jack. Obedience is big. We wanna have control over the dog, but not too much control. Because too much control, the dog kinda can get confused in so many things, so many different ways. You're gonna work Jack. Work Jack, keep your hands in. He loves biting the hands. Like for him, if you go too dead on him, he'll spit it out and try to bite you on the face. But I'll keep back pressure on him the whole time, so I won't have to worry about it. Just protect yourself, that's it. You can wear the hand gauntlets, but you take enough hits, you try not to wear that stuff. Dutch. Yeah, that's how I'm Dutch. You gotta work your dog every day, gotta work your dog every day. Squeeze those little sessions in that you can, because it's only make me better as a handler, and obviously the dog is better as a dog. Yeah, it's tiring for me to see him sweat. Yeah. As far as scent, we'll take the fluffiest dog to the ugliest dog, as long as they can find what we're looking for. And with Jack and, you know, do some scent work with him, kind of brush him up on it, see how rusty he is or, you know, how proud he's gonna make me. So he think it could be good or it could be bad, which normally is good with Jack. He try to make us proud. Say narcotics. Put it inside a container. You put the container against this. He'll give you the indication. indicate on the odor get his reward you know I walk out of the room with Jack I come in the room and I give him a signal to go search and you know this would be something he's probably imprinted on well it's definitely something he's imprinted on and being imprinted it means something that we've worked with him to with his smell and things that you know he'll pick up on this would be the same as you know as it was a police enforcement law enforcement stop somebody searching the car those are the fun things that we do with the dogs to keep their mind going to keep them tired and make them think it causes fatigue in them and you just got to enjoy doing it I want to help and give back to the community no matter what it is Fletcher went out and donated a dog it's just one of them things that's always in my heart you know you know always get you know to give turns out we get ready to start another class what does he do he goes out with a mirror and buys another dog for a police department. If you go into the training center into the classroom you'll see on the wall there's like a hundred pictures they're all rescue dogs that we made police dogs that were due to be put to sleep. I'm up in the morning early in the morning on the off days going in trying to take care of the body you know and get balanced that will come home grabbing dogs and going to go and do some training and you know try to be home before two or three o'clock which is that's that's a full day for me and I just enjoy being a human. In the city of Philadelphia, you know, drafting me gave me a chance to, you know, to change my life and to look up now and it's, you know, it's 12 years later and I'm still here. Won the Super Bowl, lost the Super Bowl, been, you know, outside of football, keep training my dogs and having fun, living life. Thanks for checking out my day off. Like and subscribe for more.