BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Police sergeant Mark Tappan and his partner were in pursuit of a criminal when they were confronted by a 10-foot wall. Tappan didn't scale the wall, but his partner did and injured himself badly, though he continued the chase until a second perpetrator was caught. Then Tappan's partner collapsed.
What's surprising about the story is Tappan's partner is his police dog, Mattis.
America’s Top Dog
8 p.m. Wednesdays
A&E
"The bad guy jumped off a retaining wall, and I thought the retaining wall was about 10 feet high, so I started to jump as well," Tappan says.
"Mattis was off-leash, running next to me, and I realized that the bad guy was still falling when I started to make the jump, and I caught myself. And my heart stopped because I saw my partner, in slow motion, floating through the air downward toward the bad guy. He landed on top of the bad guy, and he wasn't on a bite-command, so he just guarded the bad guy. We were able to take that guy into custody," Tappan says.
"I went down and did a quick check of Mattis to see if he was OK. He didn't have any structural problems, but then we got in a foot-chase with the other bad guy who had run, and we caught up to him.
"That guy gave up as soon as he saw Mattis, which was probably pretty smart, but then Mattis collapsed. ... From the initial fall, he had sustained a lacerated liver, and I had to rush him to get emergency surgery, and they opened him up," he says, lowering his eyes.
"It was the worst words you ever want to hear as a canine handler ... I love this dog so much. And the words, I remember and I'll never forget, was they told me, 'We need to get him in the surgery right away.' And so, that's a heart-stopping moment. And they were able to get him in and patch him up. And he was back to work within a month."
That kind of devotion and training is highlighted in A&E's new competition show America's Top Dog. It premiered Jan. 8.
K-9 police dogs and "civilians" will compete in a series of Ninja Warrior-type challenges. "They're highly trained dogs and teams," says producer Holly Wofford.
"They compete on three different rounds of competition, three different obstacle courses each hour ... So five teams in each episode. Over the course of these three rounds, we lose one or two in every round. And so ultimately we have our one winner. And they're deemed our 'Top Dog.' And in our final episode we bring back the top competitors, and they're competing for the title of America's Top Dog," she says.
The teams are tested on their speed, agility, ability to recognize scents and human-dog teamwork in a variety of extremely difficult courses.
The relationship between the trainer and his canine companion is unique, says trainer Amanda Caldron, who entered the race with her Shorty Bulldog, Minion. "There's no doubt about it that dogs have this intuition with us," she nods.
"You see it in every field that they work in, especially service dogs. But when we have all this adrenaline going, they know and they eat it up, and they work that much harder when they feel those stakes at hand, I believe."
Dog trainer Mark White says canine coaching is a perpetual endeavor.
"There's a lot of correlations between dogs and people," he says. "Like, Mark didn't go through a six-month (police) training academy 15 years ago, and he's just never done any training since then because he had that foundation. It's an ongoing process. There's in-service training. There's firearms qualifications. So it's an ongoing process to get better and fine-tuned, and it's the same exact thing for the dogs as well ... And so there's a lot of correlation between the dogs and the people in that sense."
Tappan found Mattis, a German shepherd, in a kennel in Alabama. "And it was kind of funny, too, because I'm a small guy. And so I wanted a small dog ... But, unfortunately, I started testing all the dogs and this beautiful guy gets out of the car, and I'm like, 'Nope, nope. No way. He's huge. He's too big for me.'
"And then he blew the test out of the water. And then the final thing (test) we do is just to see how they are in an engagement in the bite-suit ... And so, I put on a (suit) and I caught out all these different dogs and then I caught him and 'caught' means just get bit by him. And he absolutely crushed me. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I have to have this dog.' And then I just saw his control ... control is like obedience and how he wants to please you."
Tappan thinks America's Top Dog reveals more than the athletic abilities of the team; it also reveals the heart. "What I love about this show is it does highlight the relationship that everyone is talking about: This dog is with me all the time, 24/7. He's my best friend on the planet."
Weekend on 01/16/2020