Roselle: The Thunder Dog
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The true story of the guide dog who was afraid of thunderstorms, and stayed calm down 1,463 stairs of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.
A Labrador with one fear
Roselle was a yellow Labrador Retriever, trained as a guide dog. She was gentle, playful and hard-working, with one weakness: thunderstorms terrified her.
In 1999 she was matched with Michael Hingson, a man who had been blind since birth. Every day, she guided him to work. Every day, she slept under his desk.
His desk was on the 78th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
8:46 a.m.
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, the building shook, and then it tilted. Somewhere above them, a plane had hit the tower.
Michael could not see what was happening. His colleague could, and he was urging everyone to get out.
Michael reached down to his dog.
Roselle was sitting calmly beside the desk. Not panicking. Not pulling. So Michael stayed calm too. He picked up her harness, and they walked to the stairs.
Seventy-eight floors
The stairwell was crowded and filled with smoke and the smell of jet fuel. People were frightened and hurt. Firefighters were climbing past them on the way up.
Roselle kept walking. One step. Then the next. Then the next.
At one point, Michael's colleague feared they would not make it. Michael told him that if he and his dog could do these stairs, so could he.
Fifty. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. They walked out into the street.
Into the dark
Minutes later, the South Tower fell. A huge cloud of dust swallowed the streets, and the day turned dark. Michael was in a crowd, unable to see, with debris all around them.
Roselle kept working. She found a way into a subway station and led him down out of the dust, to safety.
From the 78th floor to the street, they had walked down 1,463 steps together.
After the storm
Roselle worked beside Michael for several more years before retiring. She died in 2011. That year, Michael published a book about her, called Thunder Dog, and she was named the American Humane Association's Hero Dog of the Year.
Why we still tell her story
The dog who was afraid of thunder stayed calm through the loudest morning New York had ever known.
Roselle at a glance
- Breed: yellow Labrador Retriever, guide dog
- Partner: Michael Hingson, from 1999
- Famous for: guiding Michael down 1,463 steps from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower on September 11th, 2001
- Died: 2011
- Remembered by: Michael's book Thunder Dog, and her American Humane Hero Dog award (2011)
Illustrations on this page are artistic interpretations inspired by the true story of Roselle, not historical photographs.
