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Louise to the Rescue

Denise Flaim | Animal House

October 2, 2001

THE SAD stories seem endless, just like the mountains of rubble strewn over what was, little less than a month ago, the World Trade Center.

But every once in a great while, there is a happy one.

The hero of this story is Louise, a bearded collie who was found wandering Long Island last spring. After she was rescued, Louise took a while to find what animal rescuers like to call a "forever home." Since the woman who found her lived in a no-dogs-allowed apartment, Louise was sent off to Pennsylvania to stay with the woman's mother. But when the mother's two dogs refused to accept Louise, Paul Glatzer of Smithtown, the national rescue coordinator of the Bearded Collie Club of America, found the beleaguered beardie yet another home - with a Greenwich Village couple and their golden retriever.

All should have been fine for the wide-ranging Louise - except the golden didn't like her, either. But by then, during the couple's weekend trips to their upstate farmhouse, Louise had made the acquaintance of Abigail and Tony McGrath. Abigail is a writer and "script doctor"; Tony is a political folksinger and the head of a theater company.

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It looked like Louise had found her forever home.

On Sept. 11, the McGraths and Louise were driving from their midtown apartment to Pearl Street when something heavy hit the roof of their new car. Pulling over, they saw smoke billowing out of one of the nearby Twin Towers. Paper fell from the sky. There was the roar of a jet.

"Someone shouted, 'Get down!'" Abigail remembers. "Tony and I and a total stranger were under the car when we heard the explosions. The man said to stay there, that there may be more coming. When we got up, Louise was gone."

With her leash still attached, she had jumped out the car window and disappeared.

After asking passersby to watch out for Louise, the McGraths drove to Battery Park.

The first tower fell. They fled for the park.

"It was so dark you couldn't see where you were going but you could make out the water line, so, for the first time in my life, I disobeyed the police and started walking north," Abigail says. "A laundry truck was handing out towels from the back, an act of kindness I shall never forget."

As Tony and Abigail walked up to their original destination at Pearl Street, the second tower fell.

All the while, they knew Louise would find her way. "She's a rescue, so she's smarter than all of us put together," Abigail says. "We figured she probably would have a better shot on her own."

They were right. Louise had met up with Chuck Ruch, an engineer for the high-speed ferry that runs between Glen Cove and Manhattan. After the mayhem began, Ruch - with Louise in tow - boarded a New York City Harbor patrol boat. They spent the next four or so hours rescuing victims and ferrying them back to the Liberty Landing Marina at New Jersey's Liberty State Park. Finally, on one of those runs, Chuck gave Louise to the dock master, with the instructions that she should be given to his girlfriend, Heather Crawford, who works in the marina's service department.

It wasn't until Saturday, four days after the tragedy, that the McGraths could get to New Jersey to pick up Louise. But thanks to a phone call from Heather, they learned that the beardie had been making herself useful in the meantime, licking the faces of people on stretchers, gratefully accepting the head pats of terrified children, nuzzling the tired and ash-covered rescue workers who came later.

At night, Louise bunked with Chuck and Heather in their boat.

"It was a comfort to a lot of people to have something around to be affectionate to," says Heather. "On the day of the incident, Louise spent quite a bit of time at the triage center. I think it softened a lot of people to see a dog."

But that's not to say Louise was oblivious to what was happening around her. Though up at the country house she's back to her old, frog-hunting self again, she refuses to get into the car in the city, and sometimes starts at loud noises.

"She wasn't in great shape - she was a little scared," Crawford remembers, adding that perhaps Louise's fright was a way for survivors to deal with their own. "I think when people open themselves up to give comfort to an animal, they get a grip on themselves."