The man who’d stood forlornly beside a field of twisted rubble walked up and pet Bretagne (pronounced Brittany), a then two year old golden retriever sniffing the smoldering piles for any signs of life.
Denise Corliss, Bretagne’s handler and a first responder with Texas Task Force 1 deployed to ground zero after the 9/11 attacks, recalls what the man said next: “ ‘You know, I really don’t like dogs,’ ” Corliss told the New York Times. “I said, ‘Oh?’ And he goes: ‘Yeah, my best friend loved dogs; he had a golden retriever himself. My best friend is out somewhere out there,’ and he pointed to the pile. It was a tie back to his missing friend.”
Bretagne, the last surviving four-legged member of FEMA’s rescue/recovery team, died in 2016. But she is memorialized within the K-9 Courage exhibition at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
As the grim 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, an expanded display of K-9 courage and comfort opened last Wednesday at the American Kennel Club (AKC) Museum of the Dog. “9/11 Remembered: Search and Rescue Dogs,” features portraits of dogs like Ricky, a 17-inch tall rat terrier who squeezed through tight crevasses in search of survivors. One haunting photo shows Riley, a four-year-old golden retriever, being transported out from the debris of the World Trade Center. Trackr, a retired Canadian police dog, was credited with one live rescue.
New York City Police Department’s K-9 urban search and rescue team was the first to arrive on the scene minutes after the South Tower collapsed. They were soon joined by K-9 teams from all over the U.S.
Teams worked 12-hour shifts, often for 10 days straight. Dogs suffered heat exhaustion and scrapes on paw pads, legs and bellies, though none of the injuries were considered major per Dr. Cynthia Otto, director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center in Philadephia, who treated the dogs at ground zero. The biggest tolls among the K-9s were frustration and fatigue during constant, fruitless searches, Otto noted. When the dogs got discouraged, handlers had to stage “mock finds” so the dogs could feel successful.
Besides the exploits of service dogs combing the remains of our nation’s most harrowing milestone, the AKC exhibit celebrates animal service during infamous disasters around the world.
Alan Fausel, the museum’s executive director, recalls Rex of White Way, the Samoyed who in 1952 rescued 226 passengers snowbound on a steam train in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Barry, the St. Bernard from the St. Bernard hospice in Switzerland, saved many an avalanche victim. Fausel hopes that these and other success stories can be an “uplifting” counterpart to 9/11’s sobering images.
The AKC exhibit follows up on Lower Manhattan’s K-9 Courage display which opened in January, 2020, but was scantly attended due to COVID. That exhibit features Charlotte Dumas’ portraits of 15 of the dogs who aided in recovery efforts on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 beside photographs of the dogs sifting through the wreckage 10 years earlier.
While only one survivor was found amid the ruins, first responders and other witnesses found comfort and inspiration in the dogs so devoted to their search.