What Can You Do With A Rescue Dog?
Here's a Story of a Very Special Rescue
September 11th
American flags at half staff, endless radio and TV coverage, newspapers, pictures, e-mails, phone calls…I was on emotional overload. Needing a break from this tragedy, I took my Black Lab, Velvet, to the park. We sat at a picnic table, she barked at squirrels, sniffed trees. It was quiet and cool; the wind blew lightly as we walked along.
We found ourselves at the playground where two women and one very little girl were sitting. The girl, a Downs Syndrome child, reached out to pet Velvet. The mother was nervous at first, afraid that she might pull Velvie’s ears or tail. Just as they thought, the girl pulled a little, petted a little.
Then she climbed up into my lap and gave me a hug. A simple hug from this sweet little girl, and for that brief moment, I felt an overwhelming connection with humanity. On any normal day, I would have passed these people by, but for a short moment, my mind was far away from the worries and concerns.
The call for help came a few days later. Therapy dogs were needed at the WTC Crisis Center at Pier 94 in New York City.
What would have been a 45-minute ride into the city from NJ, turned out to be just over 2 hours – Jessie and Jake, two Golden Retrievers, my Velvet, and Marbles, a therapy cat...all carpooled into the city, stopping at several security points as the police checked inside and outside and underneath our vehicle. We parked in a roof-top lot. Velvet had always been comfortable in elevators, but we never anticipated the challenge of the escalator. One missed step and her nails would be caught in the teeth of the tread. Thank God for the ‘over’ command!
We walked down the streets, past walls of pictures posted of the missing and the lost. We climbed over sandbags, stepped around banks of telephones set up for the families, National Guard with guns drawn, smells of the burning buildings and smoke, and my Velvet remained calm.
We worked from 10 AM to 7PM that first day, trying to comfort the family members who were being prepared to apply for death certificates. They refused to believe their loved ones were gone. Some of the people thought Velvet was a bomb-sniffing dog….some, a cadaver dog. One man walked up to me and remarked, “she’s alive!” His cat, he said, was left behind in his apartment and would surely die.
With nowhere to take a break, we were surrounded by the wall of teddy bears, the notes left behind - the posters of the missing were at every turn. We went outside the building for a moment, but Velvet was still ‘working’... as a police officer bent down and buried his face in her fur, and cried.
I will never forget that first night, as we stood in the parking deck overlooking the Empire State Building lit up in red, white and blue. We hugged each other and our dogs. We cried. We looked toward the south to see the smoke and the flames and knew we’d remember the pain and the horror forever, and we were in awe of the power of our dogs.
Later would come the Delta Dogs , the TDI Dogs, the Bright and Beautiful Therapy Dogs and others, but for now, we were alone with our thoughts and our dogs. Remarkable dogs - therapy dogs that were used to nursing homes and parades and public events...now charged with an unbelievable task, and they comforted us.
Our last visit to the Pier was in November when NY held the memorial at Ground Zero for the families of the deceased. They expected 2,000 to 4,000 people – they had over 11,000. We were staged at Pier 94 waiting for the ceremony to conclude. New York City bussed the people from Ground Zero to the Pier to receive the urns of ash from the site.
A lonely bagpipe woefully played “Amazing Grace’ as the people filed in. They stood in never-ending lines to receive the black boxes which held the urns. They were facing the reality of their own personal loss. There were dignitaries from foreign countries, movie stars, politicians, the Red Cross, FEMA, the ASPCA…and there were our dogs, stoic and brave, and we cried.
Velvet was entered into the New Jersey Veterinary Association Hall of Fame for her therapy work in relation to September 11th.
In 2005, she was again inducted into the NJVA Hall of Fame – Therapy Category, returning to therapy work at the Veterans’ Home after amputation of her hind leg due to osteosarcoma.
Velvet was the only dog to receive two such awards, and was a guest on Dr. Brian Vovnick’s television show, “Pet Stop” on NJN.
She was also featured in Dog Fancy Magazine, August, 2005.
Saved from a kill shelter...
Velvet was a RESCUE DOG!
