Saturday, September 10, 2011

An Unusual 9/11 Tribute


Mommy found this article about a dog from Halifax, Nova Scotia who went to New York City after the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center and we thought we'd blog about it since tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of the awful terrorist attack. 


His name was Trakr, and he was with an elite K9 Police Search and Rescue Unit. Trakr is famous because he located the last human survivor at Ground Zero. Time Magazine even named him one of history’s most heroic animals because of that!  Here's a picture of him after 9/11:



His human partner is famous, too. James Symington was one of the founders of the canine unit for the Halifax Regional Police, and we give him a HUGE highpaw for forcing senior officials to change their policy of euthanizing K-9 "officers" when they retired. (Can you believe that police department would have such a cruel policy? We pee on Halifax for that one! Why, they were even gonna euthanize Trakr - and he's a War Hero!)

Trakr and his partner retired and moved to California, where Trakr lived to be 16 years old. (He died in 2009 and we're sure Mr. Symington is sad and misses him tons.) 


Trakr made the news even after his 9/11 rescue, when he won a contest naming him the World's Most Cloneworthy Dog. (hmm, Mommy says she's not sure of that whole cloning thing, since there are so many animals in shelters waiting for their forever homes. What do you think?)

Regardless, Trakr was cloned and his 5 'siblings' were delivered to Mr. Symington on June, 2008:  Trustt, Solace, Valor, Prodigy and DejaVu. 


We do give a full round of appawse to Mr. Symington on what he did next though. These 5 Trakr clones now make up Team Trakr, an international canine Search and Rescue organization dedicated to continuing the legacy Trakr left behind.



5 comments:

  1. What an incredible story! Thanks to your mommy for finding this!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! I didn't know about any of this before. thank you for telling us about Trakr and his family I wouldn't call him an owner, he family). Man & dog are both just amazing. I bet the clones are, too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What an incredible story! Trakr was sensational, but think I agree with your mom on the cloning thing! It's a bit spooky and there are so many wonderful anipals out there needing to be loved. xox

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is an amazing story, and a wonderful tribute.

    ReplyDelete

Coolio! A comment? For US?