I Wanted to Work with Dogs That Help People. After 9/11, I Knew I Had To
By Karen Meadows
My eyes landed on the yellow lab lounging next to the checkout counter at the local feed store I regularly visited.
Weeks before, on a brilliant September morning, I’d been working on our family farm when someone flipped on the radio and we heard news that was at first impossible to comprehend: the U.S. was under attack.
Like most Americans in the days that followed, I consumed the endless coverage from New York and Washington and Pennsylvania. Yet one image in particular stuck with me: A yellow labrador comforting a depleted firefighter at Ground Zero. This is what I thought of as I reached down to the pet the beautiful animal at my feet.
“These dogs are amazing,” I said as much to the store owner as myself. “I really want to do canine search and rescue.”
Those words would ultimately change the course of my life, taking me around the country and the world and, more than two decades later, landing me in my current role as the lead trainer at Leashes of Valor.
In this now-famous photo, a dog comforts a firefighter in the aftermath of 9/11.
I’ve loved dogs for as long as I can remember, and working with them came naturally to me. I was 5 years old when I helped a neighbor train an unruly black labrador named Shammy. As a young mother in the early 90s, I began competing in obedience trials at American Kennel Club shows. But a national tragedy in Oklahoma City six years before 9/11 cemented my desire to work with dogs whose purpose was to help people.
Around that time, I’d stopped by a canine search and rescue booth at the Virginia State Fair, my two young children in tow. “Ma’am, with all due respect, you may want to raise your children first,” the gentleman told me after I’d inquired about the work. “This is not a hobby. This is a life.”
And so I put it off.
Now, I stood at the register, petting a dog and talking to a woman I didn’t know very well.
“Have you ever met Lisa Berry?” she asked me. “She does search and rescue and doesn’t live very far away. I’ll give you her number and call her and let her know I gave it to you.”
Later that week, I attended a canine urban rescue training event with my 10-month-old Australian shepherd, Ace, in a neighboring county. I was back the following week and the week after that. Soon, I was participating in FEMA training sessions with Lisa and others from our area.
Lisa Berry, far left, and Karen Meadows, third from left, in Haiti following the devastating earthquake.
Then in 2002, Ace and I were certified as an urban search and rescue team. We would deploy to Florida as part of Virgina Task Force 2 in the aftermath of Hurricanes Frances and Ivan in 2004, to Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to Haiti after the catastrophic earthquake there in 2010. Over the next two decades there were more deployments to Florida, to Texas and Mississippi, to Puerto Rico and St. Thomas, and places in between.
One thing that became clear early on: While searching for people is a dog’s number one job, they spend 99% of the time providing comfort. They know, innately, what we need after spending days searching for dead bodies—even when we don’t. Like the dogs of 9/11.
During my years with FEMA, I met many dogs and their handlers who responded to New York and Washington. I never stopped being in awe of them—canines and their humans. Although search and rescue is arduous, heart-rending work, I loved the camaraderie we shared, how we worked toward a common goal, and how we learned from each other. We all knew what it was like to miss holidays, birthdays, wedding showers, and family gatherings.
We had to keep moving. Because somebody’s life could depend on it.
A few years ago, as Lisa and I drove to another training event, we talked about how much longer we could keep “playing on the rock piles”—the rubble that so often characterizes disasters. We talked about training dogs in our “retirement.”
LOV head trainer Karen Meadows works with a service dog in training at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Today, that’s what Lisa and I do for Leashes of Valor. A national nonprofit, LOV provides service dogs at no cost to our nation’s wounded and disabled post-9/11 veterans—the very men and women who would go to war as a result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Another canine search and rescue specialist I met early on in my career, Mike Wentworth, is also part of our team of trainers here at LOV, along with Anna Gleason, who brings with her inquisitiveness and a fresh set of eyes to everything we do.
While the jobs of K9 search and rescue and service dogs are worlds apart, they are also, at their heart, the same: Both are serving mankind to make their lives better.
The rawness of 9/11 never really goes away, even after all these years. But as I remember the lives lost and the heroes made on that day, I return to those images of man’s best friend against a backdrop of unspeakable devastation, giving us the thing we needed most.
Karen Meadows is the head trainer for Leashes of Valor.