Roselle

She was asleep under Michael Hingson's desk on the seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower when the aircraft hit eighteen floors above, and the building moved twenty feet. Hingson is blind; the two of them had worked together for two years. She took him to the stairwell and started down. It took about an hour, in smoke and jet fuel fumes, with 1,463 steps and burned people coming down past them and firefighters going up. She stopped for the firefighters each time, and Hingson has said she was greeting them, tail going, on the last flight of stairs any of them would climb. They reached the lobby and got clear, and the tower came down behind them while they were still in the street — Hingson could hear it. She kept working through the dust cloud and led him and a colleague to a subway entrance. She guided him for another six years before retiring, and died in 2011 of an immune disorder. She and Salty, a guide dog who had brought his owner down from the seventy-first floor of the same tower, were given the Dickin Medal together in 2002 — the first awarded to American animals in fifty years.

Loved by · Michael Hingson

Honours

• 2001Guided Michael Hingson down 1,463 steps from the 78th floor of the North Tower
• 2001Kept working through the dust cloud after the collapse to lead him clear
• 2002Dickin Medal, shared with Salty, for remaining loyal to their owners in appalling conditions
• 2011American Hero Dog, awarded posthumously

Their kind

A Newfoundland water dog refined in England for a soft mouth and a steady head. The temperament that makes them poor guard dogs makes them the standard for assistance work.

A life in seasons