25 Years Later: The Hero Search and Rescue Dogs of September 11

It’s been 25 years since September 11, and there were so many heroes who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, including New York City and Washington, D.C. first responders, and those who swarmed to the Big Apple and the nation’s capital from other cities just to help out. Among the valiant first responders were search-and-rescue dog teams.

Of course, all those dogs are now gone, as are some of the handlers—but their heroism should never be forgotten.

The dogs on the scene were trained to find survivors, including a Doberman named Sunny. Shirley Hammond, of Palo Alto, CA said Sunny was trained to bark at live finds. But when Sunny began to signal by pawing at the ground, it quickly became evident that he was finding body parts.

Sunny had been trained at a facility where cadaver dogs were trained. Hammond believed that this previous exposure to cadaver scent, however minimal, had somehow stuck with him. And Sunny wasn’t the only one. Other dogs, with little or no training in cadaver work, also began finding body parts. Most of these remains might not have been recoverable if the search had been left to people working without dogs.

On one occasion, Sunny pawed at the ground in several spots in an area where a New York City Fire Department battalion chief had requested a search. Sunny found the remains of a lost firefighter. As devastated as family members were, finding those remains provided at least some closure.

Dog Took a Fall, Then Went Right Back to Work

Chris Christensen, a St. Louis-area police officer, drove all night non-stop and arrived at the scene before any of the FEMA dogs with his search-and-rescue dog Servus, a Belgian Malinois. I was the first journalist to speak with a search-and-rescue dog handler at Ground Zero, and it was Christensen on September 13. I authored an award-winning piece for my syndicated Chicago Tribune newspaper column, and a few days later I interviewed him live on WGN Radio. Christensen described in sometimes gory detail what it was like at Ground Zero, and how after taking a tumble Servus clearly wanted to go right back to work – to find someone.

Sadly, no dog was able to discover a living survivor at Ground Zero, but those dogs still served several unexpected functions. While none of the deployed dogs were trained as therapy dogs, they helped boost the spirits of firefighters, police officers, and others on the scene. At the time, FEMA dog handler Tony Zintmaster said about his dog, “Kaiser was clearly a social butterfly. Many rescuers stopped Kaiser, began to pet him, and give him hugs. The dogs really did offer something in a way that people couldn’t.”

Comfort Dogs

Dogs also provided comfort to family members returning from Ground Zero to pay their respects. The term “comfort dog,” for me described exactly what these dogs were doing. The majority weren’t trained therapy dogs, just fellow New Yorkers who brought out their dogs to provide comfort to others. I wrote about this in Dog World magazine. The term “comfort dog” stuck.

Dogs played another role, and so did cats. Countless readers/listeners wrote to me about how, while watching the events of 9/11, their pets comforted them. A reader named Nancy wrote, “I don’t know how we made it through. I don’t know if I would have without my two cats in my lap.”

On September 11 and in the days that followed, others were afraid to even take their dogs for a walk. It’s been 25 years, and it’s difficult to remember just how afraid we were. It’s also difficult to remember how, in the aftermath, we came together as a nation. When the United States held a moment of silence to remember the victims, people in countries around the world joined us in solidarity, solidly including our true friends to the north, Canada.

For a time, our differences seemed less important. Political party didn’t matter so much. We could disagree and still see one another first as Americans. That sense of unity has faded. Perhaps, that is another thing worth remembering about September 11: not only the terrible loss and the extraordinary heroism, the work of the dogs and their handlers but most of all, the way we seemed to understand how much we have in common.

God Bless all the first responders – those with two legs and four.