Team Info
Task Force: Virginia Task Force 2 (VA-TF2)
Agency: Chesapeake Fire
Level: Certified
Search Dog Info
Breed: Lab Mix
Sex: Male
Born: March 18, 2020
Sponsors: Nahikian Family Foundation and an anonymous donor
An elderly couple in Utah raised Pluto, but his energy level became too much for his former owners to handle as he grew. According to them, Pluto tended to find toys around the house that they thought they had hidden well. Pluto would offer the “new” toys with excitement, hoping they would throw it for him repeatedly. Pluto’s family realized they couldn’t give him the life he needed and listed him for adoption in a local newspaper to avoid surrendering him to a local animal shelter. Luckily, an SDF recruiter noticed the ad, and Pluto was on his way to becoming a search dog.
Pluto was a star student at SDF who loved everything he got to do, whether it was working for a toy or just hanging out with his trainers and getting love and affection. If you sit with him after a training session, he is the sweetest, calmest, most snuggly boy. During training, though, he’s a maniac, tugging on the toy with all his strength and running at top speed. After winning his toy, he likes to spin around while vigorously whipping the toy back and forth, sending people scattering to avoid getting smacked in the shins! This robust and strapping boy developed into an impressive search dog, though, and “Plutes with the Glutes” was paired with Brandy Outlaw of Virginia Task Force 2 in November 2022.
As a child, Brandy wanted to work at a zoo, but she ended up a dispatcher for over-the-road truck drivers. After a camping trip when a friend got hurt and she didn’t know what to do to help, Brandy took night classes to become an emergency medical technician. She ended up loving the EMT class and quit her dispatcher job to be an EMT-Basic. Within a year, she enrolled in a paramedic class and has been a first responder paramedic since 2005 and a firefighter since 2015. When Virginia Task Force 2 reached out to regional fire departments looking for canine handlers, Brandy began attending training to see what the commitment was like and has been “all in” since then.
Brandy’s journey to becoming a canine search specialist has been hard work, but worth it. She says that Pluto is an amazing partner who she’s come to love very much, which is ironic given her first impression of him. Brandy says, “Pluto was not my favorite dog. He wasn’t second or even third. On our first two visits to SDF, I watched the guys from our cohort work with Pluto. I remember watching them and feeling thankful that I was not working with that monster of a dog. Turns out, ‘Monster’ is one of my favorite nicknames for him. He is a monster, a snuggle monster!”
Brandy says she was the last to know that she and Pluto were meant for each other. “All the way through the first week, I don’t think he liked me for anything but toys and food. Things changed over the weekend. We were all given things to work on, and Pluto and I were just supposed to play with his Kong. I was told to just let him be a dog. Over the weekend we played a lot. Monday, one of the staff trainers was working with him, and I turned away to get my glove from where I had dropped it. Pluto turned from that trainer and watched me get my glove. I didn’t get to see it, but I saw the glances exchanged between the trainers. The guys told me about it later at lunch.”
Now that Pluto is home with Brandy, he fits in well with her husband and pack of two dogs and two cats (the cats may beg to differ). Pluto also fits in well with Brandy’s crew at the Chesapeake Fire Department. In the end, Brandy says, their goal is to be efficient and to help others. She envisions a bright future, training and deepening their relationship. In Brandy’s words, “Our future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades, or in Pluto’s case, RexSpecs.”
The duo trained hard with their task force teammates and achieved certification with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on July 30, 2023, in Puyallup, WA. This enables them to deploy nationwide in the event of large disasters.
Ahead of Hurricane Helene making landfall in the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm on September 26, 2024, Brandy and Pluto deployed with VA-TF2 the to assist communities in need. We wish them all the best of luck on a successful mission and safe return.