Bear and Captain Shields arrived at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan just 38 minutes after the second plane crashed into the Twin Towers. Once there, the pair worked straight through the night and into the following morning. According to firemen on the scene, Bear was the only search-and-rescue dog known to be working the entire west side of the site for approximately six or seven hours following the tragedy. Through the initial days of rescue efforts, Bear worked an exhausting eighteen hours per day searching for survivors and victims, often being hoisted into sunken pockets of rubble, glass and metal to look for bodies.  

Bear's valiant participation at the World Trade Center in September of 2001, however, did not leave him unscathed. The long hours and hard work took its toll. Bear's back was injured by a jagged piece of metal on the first night but, after being treated at a triage center on the site, he went straight back to work. Later, the area around this wound would become cancerous and his weight would drop from 110 pounds to 64 pounds. In all, Bear spent over a year in and around the smoldering site which had once been the location of New York City's World Trade Center...bringing a smile to otherwise grim faces and buoying flagging spirits with a wag of his tail.

Sadly, Bear passed away on September 23, 2002, six weeks short of his thirteenth birthday. He had been suffering for some time with the effects of multiple forms of cancer...at first thought to be an arthritic condition, although Bear's autopsy later revealed that he did not have arthritis. During the last year of his life, Bear appeared at many fund-raising events in the Greater New York area and received countless accolades for his lifetime of courageous work. After his death, the gentle and gallant Golden Retriever was honored with a funeral as a New York City Firefighter. His body was transported by an FDNY Aviation Company from the New York Animal Medical Center to the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery Crematorium and his ashes taken home by Captain Shields who keeps them in a plain gold box adorned with a plaque which records Bear's date of birth, date of death and is inscribed with the words: "Bear Shields, Hero of the World Trade Center."

On October 13, 2002, the State Senate passed a proclamation making that day "Captain Scott Shields and Bear Day" in New York. On October 27, 2002, the USS Intrepid hosted a memorial service for Bear beside the Sea-Air-Space Museum in Manhattan. Hundreds of people and a few dozen dogs attended the ceremony. An officer played “Taps”, an opera singer sang "Ava Maria" and a fly-by missing man formation was provided by Flight Across America. It was a fitting goodbye to a relentless and untiring hero, but perhaps the best tribute that can be paid to Bear is one which came from Firefighter Jean Paul Augier in a Comcast interview on the second afternoon at ground zero. He described how Bear was "phenomenal" and "amazing", working as hard as any human on the site and never hesitating to climb up over pieces of steel and crushed concrete. "How much do you credit Bear with?" Firefighter Augier was asked. He replied with one word..."Everything!"