A Golden Retriever believed to be the last 9/11 Ground Zero search and rescue dog has passed away, just a few months before her 17th birthday.
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Firefighters lined up outside a vet’s office in Texas to give a hero’s salute to the last remaining rescue dog who helped with the 9/11 search and rescue operation in NY.
Bretagne and her handler, Denise Corliss, were sent to NY to assist in search-and-rescue efforts after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She returned again past year when a special birthday party was held in the city to honor the rescue dog.
It was the first search and rescue mission for a 2-year-old Golden Retriever named Bretagne – pronounced “Brittany”. “She was part of the Texas Task Force 1, so she was deployed during Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, several other deployments throughout the state of Texas, in addition to working with other agencies” says Padovan.
Bretagne was mourned on social media by public figures like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, and by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the New York Police Department’s Special Operations Division. Bretagne was one of 300 first response search dogs that worked the site of the Twin Towers. The pair spent 10 days searching through the rubble in search for survivors.
In 2014, Bretagne was nominated for the American Humane Association “Hero Dog Award” and received the red carpet treatment during a ceremony in Hollywood, CA.
Bretagne retired from active duty aged nine. Enter Bretagne, who at the time was eight weeks old. She also served as a therapy dog, providing comfort to the exhausted police and firefighters.
“She was really anxious last night and she just wanted to be with me”, Bretagne’s handler Denise Corliss said on Monday.
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A group of emotional firefighters and rescue workers from the Cy-Fair Fire Department in Harris County, Texas, lined the footpath as her body was carried out while covered in an American flag. “She’s kind of a symbol of that”, Corliss added. “She went right to that firefighter and laid down next to him and put her head on his lap”.
