Officer Mark Tappan: 12 K9 Lessons from God
Updated: Sep 12
Here is the heartwarming story of a man and his canine police partner. Mark Tappan, a self confessed "non-planner", found his way on the perfectly (divinely?) planned career trajectory that lead him from a "Jesus epiphany" in the US Marine Corp, to youth pastor to police officer and then the human companion of A DOG NAMED MATTIS. Now with 5 million followers on social media and a new book, he shares his special bond and amazing true life stories along with his 6 year canine crime fighter.
Watch right Here:
Listen right here:
You'll hear some of the inside challenges of police dog training, and what made Mattis an exceptional straight "A" certification graduate. Mark is a gifted story teller and has some amazing stories to tell. He shares a couple of them in this episode, including Angels who sang an unlikely Neil Diamond song, a heart wrenching story of an incredible kid who had a heart transplant, and a Mark and Mattis police chase. (among others)One might think pastoring and policing is an odd career progression but Mark is convinced, for him, it was a God inspired combination that helped him find his true gift and passion. And now he shares his story in a book with 12 chapters, 12 stories, and 12 lessons he learned in the process.
PS. Remember, DOG spelled backwards is GOD. So, there is that.
MARK TAPPAN AT A GLANCE
Alpharetta Police Sergeant • Former Marine • Youth Pastor • K9 Handler • Author
Topics
Christian faith • Marine Corps • Police work • K9 Mattis • Canine training • America's Top Dog • Youth ministry • Unconditional love • Perseverance • God at work
His Faith Journey
Church upbringing → Marine Corps → Seeing authentic faith in his sister → Personal surrender to Jesus → Youth pastor → Police officer → K9 handler → Seeing God through Mattis and his work
This Episode Explores
Mark Tappan's journey from Marine to youth pastor to police officer
How his sister's faith led him to a personal relationship with Jesus
His unusual "Neil Diamond" story of coming to faith
Why Mark chose K9 work and how he met Mattis
Why Mark chose Mattis despite his size, breed and lack of police-dog training
The tooth injury that nearly derailed Mattis' training
Mattis' remarkable tracking ability and their most difficult pursuit
What Mattis taught Mark about work, perseverance and unconditional love
How dogs can build bridges between police officers and communities
The Christian lessons behind Mark's book, A Dog Named Mattis
Questions Answered
Who is Mark Tappan?
How did Mark Tappan become a Christian?
What did Mark Tappan do in the Marine Corps?
How did Mark Tappan become a police officer?
How did Mark Tappan become a K9 handler?
Who is K9 Mattis?
Why did Mark Tappan choose Mattis?
What happened to Mattis' tooth during training?
What did Mattis teach Mark Tappan about perseverance?
What is A Dog Named Mattis about?
What can dogs teach us about God and unconditional love?
Podcast Transcript: Mark Tappan on Faith, Police Work, K9 Mattis & Lessons from a Dog
Amazing Greats with Ric Hansen
From the Marine Corps to Canine Officer
Ric Hansen:Hi there and welcome to Amazing Greats. My name is Ric Hansen, and today we talk with Police Sergeant Mark Tappan and his K9 partner, Mattis, who have been featured on Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, Live PD on A&E, Entertainment Tonight, Disney's Just Beyond, HBO's The Watchmen, and A&E's America's Top Dog. K9 Mattis is one of the most decorated police dogs ever. He's had over 200 arrests and more than $2 million in cash seized, and he's even got a Purple Heart.
Sergeant Mark Tappan was a Marine, a youth pastor, and now a sergeant in the Alpharetta, Georgia Police Department. And while Mark has trained many dogs during his career as an officer, he is clear that this is the best partner he's ever had.
You know, here's a guy who is not only a dog lover, he's a Jesus lover. He's an ex-Marine, an ex-pastor, and now he heads up the canine unit at the police department in Alpharetta, Georgia. So Mark Tappan, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.
Mark Tappan:Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. I do have to correct you: I'm no longer the head of the canine unit. Once my dog retired, they kicked me out. They said I was too old and broken. So now I do hiring and recruiting.
Ric Hansen:Okay, so my research, my intel, was incorrect and not up to date.
Mark Tappan:I wish. I wish I was still in the canine unit. Best job in the world.
Ric Hansen:But you still work full-time at the police department?
Mark Tappan:That's correct. Yeah, absolutely.
Growing Up Around Dogs
Ric Hansen:Very cool. So, you know, whether it's a police dog or just a household pet, there's one thing that dogs seem to teach us humans: this thing called unconditional love. A good day or a bad day, they just want to love you and make you happy. And you learned that as a youngster back in the day, right?
Mark Tappan:That's right. Yeah, I was always surrounded by incredibly intelligent dogs. And I had a couple that were just best friends in the world.
Ric Hansen:And that's because your dad was a trainer. Is that right?
Mark Tappan:That's correct. He field-trained Labs growing up.
Ric Hansen:Yeah, yeah. So you were around them all the time. Now, to kind of track your Christian story, were you a Christian young lad as well back in those days?
Mark Tappan:I would have told you that I was. I grew up in a home where we went to church every weekend, and I'd go to youth group occasionally.
I got into the Marine Corps and saw a lot of hypocrisy in my life. And because of the love of my sister and her awesome relationship with Jesus, she made me realize that I needed the real Jesus in my life.
There was a lot of conviction and a great story, but I would have said I was a Christian. No, I was not until I got into the Marine Corps.
From Game Show Dreams to the Marine Corps
Ric Hansen:Gotcha. So that's where we're going to go first. I first of all, you had at one point thought as a kid that you might be a game show host. Is that correct?
Mark Tappan:Well, I've never been much of a planner for anything. It's just kind of let things happen as they do.
There was a show back in the day, you'll probably remember it. I'm not saying you're old, but I am. Double Dare, you remember that on Nickelodeon with Mark Summers? It looked like the coolest game show in the world.
I was going into college and I was a telecommunications major, and that was my plan. I was like, "Okay, that's what's going to happen once I get finished with my telecommunications. I will be the new host of Double Dare."
And that didn't work out. I was on academic probation after two semesters, so I was like, "Ooh, I better rethink this."
Ric Hansen:So then there was a period of time that you went from potentially being a game show host to a hanger of Christmas tree lights. That was your next quick career?
Mark Tappan:No, the Marine Corps was right after that.
When I realized game show host was not going to work out, that's when it was, "All right, we're going full bore Marine Corps."
I had an uncle who was amazing. He's a generous man, loves the Lord, a man of character, successful with both his family and in business. And he attributed a lot of his success to the things that he learned in the Marine Corps.
I didn't have a lot of those things, like the work ethic and self-discipline, self-responsibility. And so I joined the Marine Corps.
Christmas lights was kind of after that.
Coming to Faith in the Marine Corps
Ric Hansen:Let's slip back into that Marine Corps experience. There was a specific moment, obviously, or a time, a moment or season, where you really became aware of Jesus and a relationship with Jesus. Can you tell us specifically how that happened?
Mark Tappan:I was in boot camp. I was the lay leader of my platoon, so if guys had problems, they would come to me and want to pray and stuff.
I never put two and two together that your life actually had to reflect what you said you believed.
When I was in the Marine Corps, I was stationed overseas on an island called Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and I drank a lot. I had several girlfriends while I was there.
And my sister, who loved the Lord, I'd seen her life growing up, and there was a change in her. There was something different about her faith than what I said about my faith. Just the practicality, the joy in her life.
She never condemned me. All she did was love me. She was consistent in writing letters. This was way before—well, not way before emails. I remember sending my first email in the Marine Corps—but she was sending me hard-copy letters.
She would send me Christian CDs, and then I would go visit her, and I would just see this unexplainable joy in her life.
I'm like, "There is something different about her than me that I'm not getting."
So I picked up Scripture and started to read it. I got to 1 John 2:6, and it says, "If anyone would come after him, Jesus, he must walk as Jesus did."
And I was like, "My walk looks nothing like Jesus."
So I had to decide. It was one of those things where I had to look at my life and say, "Okay, do I really believe this? Is this real? Or do I need to change?"
And so I dove into it and realized, "Okay, this is absolutely 100% real, and I need to change."
So I bowed the knee.
This is another kind of funny story. In my barracks, I had a roommate, and I started to surrender my life to Jesus. As I did that, I started to hear music.
I was like, "Is this angels singing?" I'm getting chill bumps, my hands are raising up in the air.
I went to a very conservative Baptist church, so I'm having all these charismatic things going on in my life. I'm like, "Oh, I'm hearing the angels singing as I'm getting saved. This is amazing."
But oddly, they started singing "Coming to America."
I'm like, "Why are the angels singing Neil Diamond?"
My roommate's headphones had fallen off as he was going to sleep. They had fallen off as I was praying, and it was—well, it was fantastic.
I thought it was just incredible.
But that's when the Holy Spirit entered my life, and I became a Christian.
Ric Hansen:That is fantastic.
From Christmas Lights to Youth Pastor
Ric Hansen:I've never heard that story before, so this is very good—the Neil Diamond connection.
We're talking with Sergeant Mark Tappan from the Alpharetta, Georgia Police Department about his life and his amazing canine partner, Mattis.
So Marine Corps, hanging Christmas lights, but you didn't want to give up your involvement with young people and the Lord. That transitioned into full-blown pastorship, right?
Mark Tappan:Yeah. Well, there's wisdom in the church, and they actually saw that my plan was pretty poor.
They hired me on as an intern, and the internship led to junior high pastor. The junior high pastor led to high school, and then I was over student ministry. I did that for 10 years.
A Young Boy Named Drew
Ric Hansen:Wow. Ten years. So there must have been at least one story of a real God moment during that period that you can flash back on and enjoy.
Mark Tappan:Well, enjoy, yeah.
There was this boy. He came with a group of friends, and it was the first time we were on the beach. I didn't know we were going to go here. I was so excited about this story.
We went to the beach, and he and some friends came. He was 11 or 12 years old, and they were just the coolest kids, right? They were kids, and they were having fun.
I learned after the youth group, because his parents came to pick him up and I introduced myself.
I'm like, "Hey, thanks for bringing Drew and his group of friends."
And they're like, "Absolutely."
Then they're like, "Hey, there's something we should probably tell you about Drew."
They told me he had a condition. He had a hole in his heart.
They told me this because they're like, "Just watch him at youth group, because sometimes if he starts playing too hard."
And he was an athletic kid. He loved to play sports.
I saw this kid, and he was just a spectacular kid. He had great character, good parents, was kind to his friends. He was different from all the other kids.
He had a heart transplant, and he actually recovered from the heart transplant. But then there were complications afterward, and he ended up passing away.
I was there with his family during the entire experience, and I thought about the sanctification process.
I remember looking at Drew's life, and he wrote this little paper on Ephesians about struggles and God and his relationship with Jesus. It was one of the most impactful things I've read to this day.
As I think about sanctification, God makes the promise that He's going to carry it out to the end.
That's what I saw in this 12-year-old boy's life.
And if you know anything about junior high boys, you know there's not a lot of maturity. There's nothing but immaturity.
So it was cool to see the obvious hand of God at work in this kid's life, and the impact that he had in his life and in his death, the faith of his parents, and the legacy that he left through that.
It was one of the greatest things.
I'm tearing up a little bit, thinking about just their family and the difference they made in my life.
I'm a better man for knowing them.
Ric Hansen:Have you had the opportunity to keep in touch with them over the years?
Mark Tappan:Yeah, absolutely.
At one point, his dad was going to teach me guitar, which is another funny story.
But yeah, I stayed up with them on Facebook, and they ended up adopting two other girls. Just incredible people.
From Youth Pastor to Police Officer
Ric Hansen:Wow. I didn't expect that story, and I didn't dig that up anywhere else. So this is good. We got fresh new material here.
Let's move because we really want to get into this amazing canine story, because that's where I found you, and that's where five million other people on social media have found you.
How did that transition happen? You left the youth pastor role and became a police officer first, right? Walk me through that process and then maybe even how canine entered into the picture.
Mark Tappan:When I went into the Marine Corps, my actual intention when I got out was to be a police officer.
I would have stayed in ministry until probably this day. I went through a church split and some other things happened, and it put me back on the path of what I thought I was supposed to do: being a police officer.
The great part about being a pastor was that coming out of the Marine Corps, I don't think I had the maturity to be an effective police officer.
There was a lot of immaturity, probably arrogance, lack of compassion, things like that.
So a lot of people are like, "How do you go from being a pastor to a police officer?"
To me, with the Marine Corps, being a pastor, and now being a police officer, it's a perfect combination.
It's not what I had planned. Once again, I'm a horrible planner, but God had that ordained, and I think it really prepared me to be a better police officer.
I got into law enforcement. I have a strong sense of justice. I don't like seeing people being mistreated. I like standing up for the little guy because I am a little guy.
I'm an altruist. I want to contribute however I can to make this world a better place, and I want to shine in the midst of doing that for Jesus.
I started doing it, got into SWAT early on, and absolutely loved that.
I did public demonstrations for six years of my career. I was on patrol and we had a part-time SWAT team, so I did extra time on the SWAT team.
I saw when we did public demonstrations that I loved dogs, I've always had dogs, but I'd see these public demonstrations and I really saw a need in police work to connect with the community.
I'd see a guy roll up in a dirty car, but he had a canine, and immediately crowds would flock to him.
I was fascinated by the work that the dogs did, and I loved the bridge that they created.
There was one specific moment at a demonstration, a Touch-a-Truck event, and I was like, "That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be canine."
A dog became available, and I committed myself. There was no way I was not going to get that dog.
Nico: The First Canine Partner
Ric Hansen:That first dog wasn't Mattis, who we know and love. That was kind of a dog that introduced you to what canine was all about, right? Was it Nico?
Mark Tappan:Correct.
Ric Hansen:Yeah. Tell us a little bit about Nico, but we want to jump into Mattis too, because we've got a whole book about Mattis that you just wrote.
Mark Tappan:Yeah, there's a little bit about Nico in there too. Nico Dogby on Hammer.
Ric Hansen:Yeah. The book is A Dog Named Mattis. My producer always tells me, "Make sure you get the name of the book in there when you're talking about it."
So Nico was the first experience with a canine partner.
Mark Tappan:Yes. He was hard-headed and he had some flaws, but what I learned was his flaws were because of me, right?
That's where you kind of start off in canine handling. You're like, "Why won't this dog do what I want it to do?"
The answer is because you're not telling him how to do it properly.
That's the key to dog training. You're supposed to be the smart one, right? They're the experts in the field. They're the ones who have these amazing noses and these amazing abilities, but you're supposed to be the one who can interpret what they're trying to tell you.
So all of Nico's flaws, I realized, were because of me.
Nico slowly improved. He actually ended up being blind in one eye, and I was scared he was going to get hurt because we almost did get hurt on a track once because we missed a bad guy who was off to our left side.
That's when I realized that I had to retire Nico.
But he was a special dog that taught me how to be a canine handler.
Choosing Mattis
Ric Hansen:And then the introduction to Mattis was kind of unusual too, because Mattis was not like the ideal choice right from the beginning, right?
Mark Tappan:For me, yeah.
I had this aesthetic in my mind of what I wanted. It was because I went to this trainer school, and the trainer that I had, who's an incredible trainer, Jeff Franklin with Cobra Canine, had this little, probably 55- or 60-pound Belgian Malinois. Her name was Abby, and she was the most obedient, fierce, intelligent dog that I had ever seen.
I was like, "That's the kind of dog I want."
There's really been a big shift in the military and police work toward the Belgian Malinois, so that's all I wanted. I was like, "That's what I'm getting. I'm getting a Belgian Malinois, 100%."
Jeff helped develop the program for working dogs for SEAL Team Six. So I was like, "All right, we're going to be SEAL Team Six. I'm going to have a Belgian Malinois. This is going to be amazing."
I saw Mattis for the first time, and he jumped out of the car.
Here's the thing: he wasn't supposed to be a police dog. He was a personal protection dog. He didn't have all the training that all the other dogs did.
They're like, "Hey, we'll show you this dog, but it's really just because we want to get him out and get him some exercise because he hasn't done some of the stuff before."
I'm like, "Okay, perfect."
He got out of the car. He's humongous. He's not 60 pounds. He's about 100 pounds. Huge German Shepherd.
Nico was a German Shepherd, and so in my mind there were still some hangups: "Oh, but German Shepherds can be stubborn, and I don't know."
It was all Belgian Malinois.
Then I started doing my tests.
How hard do they chase a ball? What if you hide the ball from them? How hard do they hunt for the ball? If you put the ball somewhere they can't get to it, how hard do they try to get to it?
I did all these tests, and Mattis was hands-down the most incredible dog.
He was doing things I'd never seen a dog do in these tests before.
I'm like, "Man, maybe I could get him."
But I'm like, "Ah, he's too big and he's a German Shepherd."
Then we do my final test for all the dogs: you get in the bite suit.
I don't know if you've seen those before, but it's protective gear. Sometimes you'll see them in their big poofy suits. I don't like the big poofy suits because they're not good for the dogs.
You get the smaller suits. They're not as good for the person because you can feel when the dog bites. It really hurts. But the suit keeps the teeth from going through.
I ran through all these tests with about 10 other dogs. I stood still in the corner, and they would come and bite me.
Then I'd put a little pressure on the bite. I'd back them into a plastic chair, and if they popped off, I'd be like, "Ah, well, all right. You can teach that. It's not a big deal."
The last dog to come in, I'm sitting there, exhausted. I've had 10 dogs fight me.
All the dogs did pretty good. There was one Belgian Malinois that I almost wanted. I was like, "Ah, that's probably the dog that I'm going to pick."
And then Mattis came in.
His name was Cayman at the time.
All the other dogs go nuts when they see the bite suit. They start barking, going at the edge of the leash, just going bonkers.
Mattis walks in with this calm, fierce look in his eye.
He looks from person to person in the room. He knows what's up. He knows it's time to go bite someone, but he's just calculating: "Okay, who's it going to be?"
He's not going nuts. He's just focused.
I'm like, "That's amazing."
So I put my suit on, put the jacket on, and go stand in the corner.
He's not yapping. He just comes in and bites me harder than any dog I've ever been bitten by in my life.
I couldn't open my hand for three days.
I was like, "Oh my goodness. This dog."
He showed this fierce intelligence in this moment that none of the other dogs, or very few that I've seen since, can replicate.
And I was like, "That's the dog. That's it. I don't care how big he is. That's the dog that I want."
He had that intangible that was just incredible.
Why Cayman Became Mattis
Ric Hansen:And his name was Cayman. So where did Mattis come from?
Mark Tappan:My son's name, who's upstairs, is Kaden. That's really close to Cayman.
They didn't want to be yelling at the dog and my son and have his feelings hurt. So I knew I needed to change his name.
And being a former Marine, he's named after General James Mattis.
Ric Hansen:I love it. Great. That's cool.
Mark and Mattis are an incredible canine team, and Amazing Greats captures their stories right here.
A Dog Named Mattis
Ric Hansen:The book is kind of a—what I think is cool about the book is it's 12 stories about things that really happened that were a part of your and Mattis' life.
But not only that, attached to each of those stories is a lesson. What did you learn from this? Probably what did Mattis learn from this?
And then a bite of Scripture with every chapter, too, which I kind of love. Each chapter starts with a verse from Scripture.
That's the book.
But let's talk about one moment that you had talked about somewhere along the line, and I locked in on it: the fact that you at one point had to really trust your gut to stick with Mattis because there was a problem.
Tell us that story.
Mark Tappan:Well, I'm not sure which one you're talking about. There are more than one.
Ric Hansen:So I got halfway through the book, and there might be some stuff I'm not up to yet.
Mark Tappan:There's the one in selection where he never should have been a police dog, and then there's another one during the track where I wanted to give up. I think that's the one you're probably talking about.
Ric Hansen:Well, he had a health, a dental issue, is the one I'm talking about.
The Tooth That Almost Ended Mattis' Training
Mark Tappan:So that's when I selected him, yeah.
Right after I picked him, we got into the training class. The training class was an abbreviated one. I was already an experienced handler, and I was also a trainer. I had trained several dogs and had experience, so it was a brief class of only six weeks.
The problem was Mattis didn't have any odor work imprinted on him. I had to teach him all the odor stuff on the side. All the other dogs already knew that stuff.
The first week of training, he chipped a tooth.
The course told me, "Okay, well, it's six weeks. If he has a chipped tooth, he's not going to be able to do any bite work."
The way you reward these dogs for doing what you're asking them to do is, if they go and find an odor, you toss them a ball.
If I toss him a ball, he could break off the remainder of his tooth.
So they're like, "You're not going to be able to train your dog."
I'm like, "I don't care. That dog is special, and I want that dog."
I didn't care what it took. I was taking a huge risk.
My department was sending me away from the road and my responsibilities for that time frame to train the dog. I would come back so I could be used.
If I had to start over, or if this didn't work out during that six-week process, it was very likely they would say, "Okay, we don't need the dog," and I'd just go back to patrol.
So I was taking a huge risk, but I just knew this dog was special.
One thing you can't test in dogs is their learning curve. I was taking a huge risk that he could pick things up really fast because I thought I saw that in him.
During the course, I was not allowed to do anything with him regarding odor.
So what I did was find a way. Because he couldn't bite down on a ball or a tug toy because that could rip out his tooth, I went to my hotel room and took a face towel and wrapped it up.
That's what I would use.
If he did something I wanted him to do, I'd reward him with that.
I'd go in early in the morning to train him, stay late in the afternoon to train him at the school, which was in Alabama while we're in Georgia.
So I'm staying in a hotel. I would spend all this extra time training him so he could be ready for the job.
This little face towel, which they had never used before, I put some duct tape on it, shoved it into his mouth as deep as I could, and would play with him.
It turned out that at the end of the course, he was actually the only dog who passed certification.
Ric Hansen:Really?
Mark Tappan:Wow, on the first try.
They ended up, around the fourth week, capping his tooth with a titanium overlay, which had to set for a week.
That put us right at the day of certification, when he was finally cleared to bite something.
That was important because that was the day he was going to have to bite something.
And he just nailed everything.
He was such an incredible dog.
Retirement Doesn't Mean Mattis Wants to Stop Working
Ric Hansen:Wow. So you and he are partners for a while—for what, six years, something like that?
Mark Tappan:Six and a half.
Ric Hansen:And is Mattis still alive and well?
Mark Tappan:He's sitting right here by my side.
Here, let me give you a—
Ric Hansen:Is he?
Mark Tappan:Yeah. He's always by my side.
Ric Hansen:Oh my gosh, look at that.
I was hoping we'd have an opportunity to put him on camera.
For those of you listening to the audio version, you just missed out on a great shot of Mattis on the floor.
He looks like he's just relaxing and enjoying retirement.
Mark Tappan:Yeah, but at the same time, he would much rather go to work.
Yesterday we got the chance to go read. We have a kids' book too, and I got to go to my daughter's school and read the book.
I came home and got his harness out, and that was his clue that we were going to work when he was actually working with me.
He got so excited. He started running in circles. He comes to the harness, pops his head through.
I get him ready and he darts straight out to my car.
It was like, "Can we do this every day?"
He had to retire because of a medical issue, so it's really not safe for him.
But yeah, he loves to work and he loves being with me. And I love being with him.
So, yes, he likes retirement, but he'd rather be working.
The Lesson of the Track
Ric Hansen:Yeah, I got you.
And that's really like—I think people who are energetic and love what they do would rather be doing that, even as humans.
So let's pluck something out of the book that maybe your favorite story or your favorite chapter that you can share with us. What would that be?
I know there was a—I was going to run through a few of these chapter titles just because they're so cool.
One is "Go All In," "Build Bridges, Not Walls," "Persistence Pays," "God Works for the Good," "Keep Your Eyes on What's Important," "Let Your Light Shine."
There were several others too, but I just plucked those out.
Tell us what chapter might be your favorite.
Mark Tappan:Well, I think it's the one that I alluded to earlier, where I had to trust him.
It was this track, and it was his first track right when we got back from canine school. He had just passed certification, and I was so excited about this dog.
Someone had stolen something from a mall. It wasn't a big deal. Most of the time you're like, "Okay, you go take the report."
But I really wanted to use my dog.
One of his capabilities is tracking good guys or bad guys. It doesn't mean that just because I'm using him, he's going to bite someone at the end.
He can find a lost kid. He's a super-stable dog.
Anyway, they had run off and then started going on the interstate, so we kind of canceled it. But they ended up wrecking out on the side of the road.
I came up. It was rainy, which is not the best condition to track in. It was a little cold.
The supervisor said, "It's just not that big of a deal."
But I'm like, "It's a slow day. I'd like to use my dog. Can I just give it a shot?"
He's like, "Sure, go ahead."
I got another officer with me, and we started tracking.
He goes up to the car and gets the odors, which I think is absolutely incredible—that dogs can see the world through their nose.
What he did in that moment is he sticks his head in that car and gathers the information in his brain: "Okay, it's these two people that were in here that are no longer here, and I'm looking for them."
You've got to think there are dozens of officers surrounding us. All this human odor, but he knows it's not any of these people. It's the two who ran away.
He starts on this track and we go down along the freeway, which is also hard because you've got all these cars. It's blowing odor everywhere.
But he's killing it. He's going.
He gets to this ditch that cuts back up underneath what I think is an eight-lane freeway.
This ditch goes underneath.
It's raining. It's dark. It's about a three-and-a-half-foot tunnel. I'm not tall, but it's one of those where I couldn't crawl and I couldn't stand all the way up, so I'm hunched over the entire way.
Mattis is pulling full force through this tunnel. It's concrete and rough concrete.
As you can see, I am follicly challenged, which means my head was dragging on top of the concrete half the way through.
My back's hurting. I've got blood running down my face. There are rats at our feet.
My dog is just plowing through.
I'm getting exhausted.
It's probably a hundred yards from one side of the tunnel to the other.
We get to the other side, and there's a waterfall. It drops off about probably 25 or 30 feet.
And I'm like, "There's no way they came this way."
I'm exhausted, blood running down my face, skin hanging off my head, my back hurts, and I'm trying to decide if I want to continue on.
I look over to the side, and there's a chute right in the mud beside the entrance—or exit—of the tunnel.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this dog is nailing it."
These are all through water, which is an advanced technique that I haven't even taught him yet.
We've only done very basic training on tracking.
I'm like, "Okay, well, let's keep going."
He's nailing it.
I carefully pull myself up through the mud.
Now I'm bloodied, tired, my back aches, and I'm covered in caked mud.
The dog starts pulling straight down this hill.
Like I said, he tracks fast.
I'm falling, hitting trees on the way down as he's dragging me through the woods.
My backup's probably laughing at me as all this is happening. He was doing a great job keeping up with me.
We go through a stream, out the other side of the stream, then back up the mountain and back down again.
I'm like, "This dog has no clue what he's doing."
We've been tracking for over a mile now.
I was exhausted when I came out of the tunnel. Now I'm really exhausted, and I'm ready to give up again.
So I tell Mattis to lay down.
I ask my backup officer, "There's a street up that way. Can you go and check what that is? We got the Chattahoochee River over to our right. There's a street right there. Can you see what that is so I can tell someone to come pick us up?"
He starts going.
Mattis starts pulling.
I'm like, "Why are you pulling? I told you to lay down."
I'm getting frustrated with him.
He's pulling toward this one area, and where the area is, there's another chute.
And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this dog is killing it."
So I'm like, "Okay, I gotta trust him."
He starts tracking again.
I call my backup back, and we start running.
I see about 200 yards off in the distance two people who have been running from us the entire time in the woods, and we're catching up to them.
I'm at a full sprint. Mattis is at a full sprint.
I tell them to give up.
They do.
They were exhausted. I was exhausted.
Mattis' tail is just wagging.
But it was one of those moments where so much was happening. I was beat down, I was hurt, I had doubts about my dog, and I wanted to give up.
And that's where the lesson comes in.
You don't give up. You trust your dog.
There's a reason that we have these dogs. Their noses are incredible, and if they mess up, most of the time it's on us.
It would have been on me if we hadn't found those guys at the end because I wanted to quit, and he was right the entire time.
So it's lessons like that: Don't give up.
If God's got a plan, He'll bring you through it, even if it's hard going through it.
Keep persevering.
What Mattis Has Taught Mark About God
Ric Hansen:And all to get a mall theft, right? That's kind of beside the point, really.
The whole concept is just fantastic.
A Dog Named Mattis is at the heart of our conversation with Sergeant Mark Tappan on Amazing Greats.
Tell me some other God tidbits with you and Mattis through your experiences together. Maybe just one other incident where God was, as you're talking today and as I've researched your background, I can trace the spots where it was very clearly likely a God thing.
And like you said, you're not a planner, so you depended on God to do the planning.
Mark Tappan:Yeah. I think what you alluded to very early on in the interview, one of the biggest impacts that dogs have had on my life is the unconditional love that they have.
I think that's one of the things that convicts me most.
All this book is, is a collection, with my worldview lens, of seeing God work all around us in everything.
That's what I hope readers take away.
My circumstances are with a dog, and hopefully it's some cool cop stories that you get. But I learned so much because of the way that he attacks life, the way that he loves to go to work.
That's one of the common themes that I keep going back to, and it's something my mom really instilled in me too: Colossians 3:23.
It says, "Everything you do, work at it with all your heart as if you're working for the Lord, not for men."
That's what I saw in Mattis every day that he went to work—this incredible work ethic, this joy that he had to run to the car, to jump in, to put his harness on, to do any job that I asked him to.
And it was because of this bond that we had built.
There are so many stories, but that was the most convicting: just the way that when you come through the door after being gone for 20 minutes, they love you like they haven't seen you in a week.
It's amazing.
And it makes me want to be a better employee, a better dad, a better husband, a better Christian just in this life.
Because of creation—which is what Romans 1 tells us, right? Creation will lead you without an excuse. You have to say there is a God.
That's what dogs have done. That's what everything should do for everyone.
What Dogs Teach Us
Ric Hansen:I'm a dog lover too.
I've never had that kind of special relationship, nor have I been a very good trainer, to be honest with you.
Mark Tappan:It's really what it is.
Ric Hansen:Well, when they're undisciplined, it's not because they don't want to be. It's because I've never taught them how to be.
One of my last dogs passed away at 17. We had to put him down.
So, as I'm going through these weeks of him being unhealthy, I'm thinking to myself, "What am I learning from this in my life?"
One of the things—the first thing that came to my mind—was unconditional love.
But then it was patience, because here I was having to force-feed him, give him arthritis medicine, all this stuff. It was caretaking 24/7, really.
So patience was another thing.
And then the third thing was courage.
It took me a lot of courage to come to the point where I had to decide it was time for him to go.
I was always praying, "God, please take him in the night so I don't have to make that decision."
But God didn't give me that. He gave me the gift of courage by making that decision.
So now I'm tearing up.
Mark Tappan:I tell people all the time there are animals with better olfactory senses than dogs.
But the thing that sets dogs apart is the bond that they have with people.
One of the other emphases in my book is that it creates this amazing bridge with people.
Being a police officer, one of the great things I get to do is speak to people in their darkest times and hopefully be a light.
With a dog, it intensifies that because where people usually don't want to talk to a police officer, if it's a canine, all of a sudden they do.
They're interested. They're fascinated.
It creates this avenue.
And I love it.
There's a special bond between people and dogs that makes them perfect for this kind of work or just as a companion.
The Book's Biggest Takeaway
Ric Hansen:Yeah, and now you've inspired me.
We now have a new dog after a year and a half of not having a dog. We have a new dog, and he is a puppy and a rascal.
So I'm taking some tidbits from your story to try to get a little better control over his behavior.
If there was something that you would love your readers to take away as a takeaway from the book, what would that be?
Mark Tappan:Well, you get two.
One is what we've already talked about: that you'd be able to enjoy the circumstances that I give to you, but be able to apply those to your own life and see how God is working in these circumstances through yours.
And then, if you could fall in love with these dogs and the work that they do, I'm fascinated by it.
I think what they do is incredible, and there are some amazing stories out there.
What's Next for Mark Tappan?
Ric Hansen:So you're now doing—tell me specifically what you're doing. You're still with the police department, and you do recruitment of dogs or of—?
No, I wish. Dogs, I think, are easier to find than people are sometimes.
Mark Tappan:I do hiring and recruiting for my department.
So, Alpharetta PD, if you're looking for a job, come on out.
Ric Hansen:There you go.
And what's next for you? Are there more books in you along the line?
Mark Tappan:You know, I never—
First of all, if not for the belief of some people in my life, I mean, you hear my background, right? A college dropout, Marine, you know, crayon eater here, and not much of a planner.
There were some people who believed in me, and that's why this book came out.
But as I sat and started thinking about the stories that I'm telling, there are so many other handlers with great stories and great lessons to be learned.
So I think, as I thought about it, I'd really like to talk to other handlers and get their stories and then introduce people to the lessons and the heroes that are out there—in hopefully book form.
Ric Hansen:Yeah. That would be fun.
And now the book that you just wrote—there's an audio version of it as well?
Mark Tappan:Correct. Yep. Anywhere you get your books, audio versions, whatever, it should be out there.
Ric Hansen:Did you do the narration?
Mark Tappan:I did. I did.
There are a couple of very emotional moments in the book, and it was hard to get through those.
I'm an emotional guy, so yeah, it kind of comes through.
Ric Hansen:Yeah. I love when the author actually is the narrator too, because you just get a sense of emotion beyond just the reading of the words.
I guess the last question is: Is the game show host thing out of the picture now?
Mark Tappan:I think it's more likely now. You know, I might have avenues to actually do this.
And ironically, because of Mattis and all that he accomplished, we got to go on a game show, which I thought was pretty cool.
Ric Hansen:Really? What was the game show?
Mark Tappan:America's Top Dog.
We won our episode, came in second in the champions, so that's part of our lore, and that's a chapter in the book as well.
Closing
Ric Hansen:I really love your story. I mean, this has been a pleasure to check in and find out about the story.
We will be following you.
Thank you so much for your time. God bless you for all that you've done and are about to do.
Mark Tappan:Thank you, Ric. It was a pleasure.
Ric Hansen:What a great story and a great storyteller.
Mark Tappan and his book, A Dog Named Mattis, are available now. Links to all of his social media opportunities are listed in the show notes here.
Thanks for listening or watching to this very special episode of Amazing Greats.
Please take a moment to share, subscribe, and like the podcast to help share these many fingerprints of God with others.
And check us out on our website at amazinggreats.net. The whole library of Amazing Greats episodes is right there.
Thank you, and God bless.
Comments