09/11/2026
At 8:46 this morning, 25 years ago, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
We remember the people whose lives were taken that morning. We remember the firefighters, police officers, paramedics, Port Authority workers, rescue workers, and ordinary New Yorkers who ran toward danger to help people they had never met.
At Sit Pretty, we also want to remember some of the four-legged heroes who served beside them.
An estimated 300 dogs took part in the rescue, recovery, police, and comfort efforts following September 11.
There was Roselle, the yellow Labrador guide dog who was resting beneath her owner Michael Hingson's desk on the 78th floor of the North Tower when the plane struck.
In the smoke, noise, confusion, and crowds, Roselle went to work. Together, Michael and Roselle helped lead a group of 30 people down 1,463 steps from the 78th floor. Survivors later told Michael that seeing him and Roselle calmly making their way down the stairwell gave them confidence to keep going.
After reaching the street and surviving the collapse of the South Tower, Roselle continued guiding Michael through the chaos of Lower Manhattan.
Roselle was not the only guide dog inside the World Trade Center that morning.
Salty, another yellow Labrador guide dog, was with his owner, Port Authority employee Omar Rivera, on the 71st floor of the North Tower. As they evacuated, Salty guided Rivera down through the tower. When others attempted to take Salty's leash so they could help Rivera escape, Salty broke free and returned to his owner. He stayed with Rivera and helped guide him out.
And then there were the search-and-rescue dogs who climbed mountains of twisted steel, broken concrete, glass, ash, and debris at Ground Zero.
They had been trained to find people alive.
But as the hours and days passed, there were heartbreakingly few living people left to find.
For these dogs, searching was work they had spent their lives learning:
Find the person.
Alert your handler.
Get your reward.
Do it again.
As the chances of finding survivors dwindled, some responders recalled seeing the toll of unsuccessful searches on the dogs. One Ground Zero firefighter later recalled that handlers sometimes arranged practice finds, hiding a living person among the rubble so a search dog could make the successful live find it had been trained for.
Find the person.
Alert.
And finally hear the words it had been waiting for:
Good dog.
Then they went back to work.
They searched for the missing. As the mission shifted from rescue to recovery, dogs helped recover human remains so families could bring their loved ones home. Many suffered cuts and abrasions to their paws. They worked amid the dust, debris, and hazardous conditions of Ground Zero.
And still, when their handlers asked them to search again, they searched.
Dogs could not understand terrorism.
They could not understand why the towers were gone, why thousands of people were missing, or why the humans around them were grieving.
They only understood the job in front of them.
Find.
Help.
Stay beside your person.
Twenty-five years later, from one New York dog business, we remember the dogs who served our city when our city needed them most.
Roselle. Salty. Apollo. Bretagne. Riley. Sirius—the PAPD K-9 who never made it home—and hundreds of other working dogs whose names most of us will never know.
Good dogs.
Every single one.
Never forget. 🇺🇸🐾
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