As we approach the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, Townhall plans to honor the lives lost and the lives forever changed with our "Heroes of 9/11" series. Every day from now until September 11, we will highlight an American hero. This year, most especially, we wish not simply to commemorate an event, but the character of exceptional men and women (and dogs) who demonstrated the best of humanity in one of its darkest moments. More than that, we want to educate younger generations for whom September 11 is little more than a historical episode so that we embody what it means to "Never Forget."
In his 1983 book "Mister Rogers Talks With Parents," Fred Rogers shared what his mother once told him when he saw bad things on the news: "Look for the helpers." Nowhere was that truer than on September 11, 2001.
While the world watched in horror at the fall of the World Trade Center and the profound sadness that followed, a group of people quietly got to work at Ground Zero. They were accompanied by man's best friend, and the dogs of 9/11 proved themselves heroes, too.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, hundreds of dedicated search and rescue dogs were deployed to Ground Zero, where they worked side by side with first responders amid unimaginable devastation. These highly trained K9s tirelessly searched through the rubble, assisted in… pic.twitter.com/5uDuDMiZgo
— 9/11 Memorial & Museum (@Sept11Memorial) June 30, 2026
On that Tuesday morning, New York Police Department (NYPD) dog Apollo, a German Shepherd, was slated to receive the 2001 ACE Award for Canine Excellence in the Uniformed Service K-9 Department. Instead, Apollo and his human partner, Officer Peter Davis, were called to work at the World Trade Center.
Apollo and Davis were the first to arrive on the scene, and it was just after the buildings had collapsed. At the time, Apollo was already nine years old, an age at which most working dogs had retired. Instead, they got to work, and tragedy almost struck immediately.
"To get to the rubble, we had to go through almost waist-deep water," Davis told the American Kennel Club. "All of a sudden he disappeared, fell into a hole. Then this big fireball comes up and he comes running out. He was on fire. I brushed off the burning embers and he went right back to searching."
Apollo was a German Shepherd search and rescue dog who worked with the New York Police Department’s K-9 unit.
— FeelGoodThoughts (@feelgoodtale) July 24, 2026
Handled by Officer Peter Davis, Apollo was one of the first search and rescue dogs to arrive at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. The team arrived just 15 minutes… pic.twitter.com/sskANCf2js
Sadly, when Davis realized that Apollo would not find survivors, as he was trained to do, he literally had to pull Apollo from the piles of rubble. Apollo wanted to keep looking even though he hadn't found a survivor.
Apollo died at age 14.
On September 17, Mike Forsythe arrived at Ground Zero with his dog, Cara. Cara was equipped with a camera so rescuers and others could see into the rubble as Cara searched. It took three days to figure out how to get that remote camera system to work and attach it to the dog. Workers first wanted to have a stick rig. Forsythe shut the suggestion down. "No way," he said. "If she gets hung up on a piece of rebar or something, I've got a dead dog."
Eventually, they created a Velcro-based harness that would tear away if Cara got stuck. To get into the rubble, Forsythe put Cara over his shoulder and climbed a ladder. Later, Cara started working as a therapy dog in nursing homes, and the Forestry Service and the National Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR) enlisted her to help teach kids how to take care of themselves if they got lost.
Bretagne (pronounced "Brittany") was just two years old when she worked with handler Denise Corliss and Texas Task Force 1 for ten days after the 9/11 attacks, shifting from rescue to recovery. She was the last known surviving 9/11 search-and-rescue dog, and received a final salute before being euthanized just shy of her 17th birthday. A cobblestone bearing her name sits on the Memorial grounds.
Meet Bretagne, one of the many dogs who helped search out survivors of 9/11. She continued rescue work until she was laid to rest in 2016. Don’t pass without leaving a big heart ❤️ pic.twitter.com/uXBvoHKJRT
— Puppies & Positivity (@Puppieslover) September 12, 2025
James Symington was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on September 11. After learning of the terrorist attacks in New York, he jumped in his van with his retired police dog, Trakr. They drove more than 12 hours to get to Manhattan to help. They focused on a pile of rubble and debris from the North Tower, and in the early morning hours of September 12, Trakr got a "live hit." That was enough to draw workers to an area where they eventually saw a piece of reflective material on a jacket. It belonged to Genelle Guzman. Guzman worked on the 64th floor of the North Tower and made it down to the 13th floor before the building collapsed. Guzman landed on top of a firefighter's body with her head trapped by a concrete pillar.
Trapped for nearly 26 hours, Guzman was the last of just 20 survivors pulled from the rubble.
Not all dogs looked for survivors. Some were used to recover victims so their loved ones could find closure. One of those dogs was Morgan, a cadaver dog. Her human, Katrene Johnson, said Morgan worked at a location called the Hill. "[It] was a quarter-mile square and noisy with trucks coming and going, hauling debris. Massive front-end loaders spread it out so we could search through it."
One investigator found a half-eaten sandwich while searching for personal items like watches, wallets, or pictures. But it was something else that Morgan did that was even more important than her search work: she comforted the other rescuers.
"It was tough on everyone," Johnson said, "and it helped us to have the dogs there during breaks. The dogs would be resting, sense something, and go to a person. Petting the dog, the person would start talking, usually about the dog. It helped."
That comforting presence helped the workers endure the hard work of recovery. Morgan later went on to work finding missing persons after Hurricane Katrina.
Riley, a Golden Retriever, was trained to find living survivors, but he ended up finding the bodies of fallen firefighters. According to the Humane Society for Greater Nashua, Riley and other dogs took not finding survivors hard, and rescuers would sometimes hide in the rubble so the dogs could "discover" a survivor.
Riley never wore a badge, but he became one of the quiet heroes of 9/11.
— GFY TV (@Viralvid_89) July 14, 2026
After the Twin Towers collapsed, more than 300 search-and-rescue dogs were deployed to Ground Zero. Riley, a golden retriever, spent countless hours climbing over twisted steel and mountains of debris,… pic.twitter.com/P30S1imwa8
Other dogs also served as a source of comfort and therapy for those working at Ground Zero. One of them was Nikie. Her human, Frank Shane, was a certified trauma responder who worked in Mental Health Services. Together, they would visit the respite areas to lift the spirits of the people tasked with clearing the rubble and sifting through the debris. Nikie and Shane worked the site until all the debris was cleared, and they participated in the Last Column ceremony, handing out flags to recovery workers. After Nikie passed away in 2004, her therapy vest and booties — both still soiled from working at Ground Zero — were donated to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, where they are now on display.
The legacy of these rescue dogs goes well beyond September 11 and the other disasters they worked. Dr. Cynthia M. Otto, a veterinarian who worked at Ground Zero, was inspired by all these dogs to create the Penn Vet Working Dog Center. Otto called the dogs a "ray of sunshine" in a dark time and said the positive media coverage inspired dog owners to pursue search-and-rescue certification and gave organizations that trained those dogs a financial boost.
"There was some sense that they might be able to find a lost Boy Scout in the woods but nothing of the scope and impact of a national disaster," Otto said. That changed after September 11, and it also opened up a new era for therapy dogs. The concept had been around since World War II when Smoky, a four-pound Yorkshire Terrier, would visit wounded soldiers on the islands near New Guinea.
During the recovery efforts, Red Cross mental health experts noticed that workers who wouldn't talk to human therapists would often talk to the dogs. That's where dogs like Tikva, trained in crisis relief, came in handy. Like Nikie, she was at Ground Zero not to search for survivors or recover victims, but to support the workers.
Dog trainer Cindy Ehlers, Tikva's human handler, summed it up: "A firefighter called up V-Mat [Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams] after we left and said, ‘Where are those comfort dogs? They’re the only thing that helps me get through the day."
This is part of the American Heroes of 9/11 series. To read more about the American Heroes of 9/11, click here.
Editor's Note: We must never forget those lost on 9/11 and the American heroes who sacrificed their lives to save countless others.
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