Last updated: September 11, 2026
There are countless stories from September 11, 2001 that have stayed with people over the last 25 years. Stories of bravery, sacrifice, strangers helping strangers, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things in circumstances most of us cannot begin to imagine. As a lifelong dog lover, there is one story from that day that has always had a special place in my heart. It’s the story of a yellow Labrador Retriever named Roselle.
Twenty-five years ago today, Roselle was asleep under her owner Michael Hingson’s desk on the 78th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Hingson, who has been blind since birth, was at work preparing for a morning meeting. Roselle had been his guide dog since 1999 and, until that morning, September 11 was just another day the two of them went to work together.
At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower approximately 15 floors above them. The building shook. Ceiling tiles fell. Smoke and the smell of burning jet fuel would soon fill the stairwell. Thousands of people were trying to understand what had happened and find their way out.
And Roselle went to work.
Hingson took her leash, and together they made their way to the emergency stairwell and began the long descent from the 78th floor. Roselle calmly guided him through the smoke, noise, confusion and crowds around them.
They had 1,463 steps to go.
It’s a number that has always stuck with me. It’s one thing to say that Roselle guided him down 78 floors. It’s another to imagine each individual step. More than 1,400 of them, one after another, surrounded by frightened people while neither Roselle nor Hingson could know exactly what was happening above them or what they would find when they reached the bottom.
Yet Roselle remained focused on her job.
Hingson has spoken many times about the trust between them that morning, and I think that’s an important part of this story. He worked to remain calm and continually encouraged and praised Roselle as they descended. Roselle, in turn, continued doing what she had been trained to do.
They worked as a team.
At one point, Hingson’s colleague David became convinced they weren’t going to make it out. Hingson reminded him that if he and Roselle could keep going down those stairs, so could he. In the years since, other survivors have even approached Hingson and told him that hearing him calmly encouraging Roselle in the stairwell gave them confidence to keep going.
There’s something incredibly moving about that to me. In one of the most terrifying situations imaginable, the relationship between one man and his dog became a source of reassurance for people around them. After more than an hour, Roselle and Hingson finally reached the lobby and made it outside. But getting out of the building wasn’t the end.
Shortly after they exited, the South Tower began to collapse, sending an enormous cloud of dust and debris through the streets of Lower Manhattan. Hingson and Roselle ran for safety as metal, glass and debris fell around them.
And then Roselle stopped.
Hingson couldn’t see why, but Roselle could. They had reached the top of a flight of stairs leading down into the Fulton Street subway station. Alerting a handler to stairs and changes in elevation is part of a guide dog’s job, and even in the middle of the chaos surrounding them, Roselle did exactly what she had been trained to do. Together they went underground and took shelter.
There’s another part of Roselle’s story that I absolutely love because it feels so incredibly dog. After everything she experienced that day, Roselle eventually returned home with Hingson. She grabbed her favorite tug toy and started playing with his retired guide dog, Linnie. The same dog who had just spent more than an hour guiding her person down 1,463 stairs while the World Trade Center was under attack apparently decided that once she was home, it was time to play.
Because underneath the extraordinary story, she was still a dog.
Roselle is often described as the guide dog who saved her owner’s life on September 11, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with recognizing what an incredible dog she was. But I also think it’s important not to lose something Hingson himself has emphasized over the years: they were a team. Guide dogs aren’t furry GPS systems, and their handlers aren’t simply passive passengers following wherever a dog decides to take them. The relationship requires communication, decision-making, training and an enormous amount of mutual trust.
Roselle relied on Michael, and Michael relied on Roselle. By September 11, they had already spent nearly two years building that relationship.
Roselle was born on March 12, 1998 and raised in California before returning to Guide Dogs for the Blind for her formal guide dog training. She and Hingson were matched in November 1999, and she became his fifth guide dog. Neither of them could have known at the time just how profoundly that partnership would eventually be tested.
September also happens to be National Service Dog Month, which makes Roselle’s story feel especially fitting to share today. Service dogs perform incredibly important work every day, although thankfully most will never be asked to work under circumstances anything like what Roselle experienced.
Depending on their training, service dogs can guide people who are blind or visually impaired, assist people with mobility disabilities, retrieve objects, alert handlers to medical events and perform countless other disability-related tasks that help their handlers live more safely and independently.
Behind every one of those working partnerships are countless hours of training, repetition and trust. There are breeders, puppy raisers, trainers, organizations and handlers involved in preparing these dogs for their jobs. And then there are the dogs themselves, who learn not only commands but how to work alongside one specific human being.
Roselle continued working as Hingson’s guide dog for years after September 11. Their story received international attention, and together they appeared publicly to educate people about guide dogs, blindness and the partnership between handlers and their dogs. Hingson eventually went to work for Guide Dogs for the Blind and became a public speaker.
Roselle retired from guide work in 2007 and continued living with Hingson. She died on June 26, 2011, at the age of 13. Later that year, Hingson and Susy Flory published Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero, sharing their experience and the relationship that helped carry them through it.
It’s difficult to believe that September 11, 2001 was 25 years ago.
For those of us who remember that day, there are certain images and stories that never really leave you. Roselle’s is one of mine.
Maybe part of that is because I’ve spent so much of my life around dogs. As a pet photographer, I get a front-row seat to the relationships people have with their animals. I’ve photographed dogs who are goofy, stubborn, anxious, brave, elderly, sick, energetic and everything in between. I’ve seen over and over again how deeply they become woven into our lives.
But there’s something about imagining Roselle waking up from a nap beneath a desk that morning and simply doing her job while the world around her changed forever that gets me every time. She didn’t know she was participating in a moment that would become part of history. She didn’t know people would still be telling her story 25 years later.
She knew the person beside her trusted her.
And she knew what she had been trained to do.
So, step by step, she did it.
1,463 times.
Today, as we remember the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on September 11 and the countless others whose lives were forever changed by what happened that day, I’m also remembering Roselle.
A working dog. A trusted partner. And one very, very good girl.
