Homeowner Feature: Kevin and Karrah Butsko

The Butsko family built a place for their family and their hard-working pups to call home.

September is Service Dog Month, which is the month we celebrate these incredible working dogs who help people with disabilities live more independently. They’re trained as service dog pros to complete a variety of tasks – like picking up a dropped cell phone at the park or alerting their human about an impending medical emergency. These four-legged friends are truly amazing!

In honor of Service Dog Month, we’re highlighting one of our homeowner families that works with FEMA and has two working dogs.

While they aren’t service dogs for people with disabilities, they are hard-working pups with special skills they use to help people in times of crisis.

Kevin and Karrah Butsko have Scout, a 5-year-old German Shepherd and Sherwood, a 3-year-old Black Labrador.

Sherwood actually started out being trained to be a service dog, so the Butskos understand the amount of work that goes into this training.

We got to know Kevin and Karrah when they worked with Wayne Homes to build their Winchester II with the Tradition exterior. They worked with our Portage team on their new home. In addition to their furry family members, Kevin and Karrah have one son named Matteo who turned 3 in August, and they have a baby on the way!

Their homebuilding journey began in March 2023.

The Butskos closed and started moving into their new home in March 2024. It moved quickly from when Kevin and Karrah first discovered their ideal home plan.

“We were driving through Ravenna and drove by the Model Center. After searching online, we started looking at Wayne’s floor plans. We saw the Winchester and loved it!”

Soon after, they found their piece of property and then the rest is history.

Kevin and Karrah previously owned a home in a development. However, with their two dogs and growing family, they wanted more space.

They found their piece of land near family and friends.

Karrah said “We wanted more of an open floor plan in a two-story home. My biggest thing was a large kitchen, and the two islands in the Winchester really intrigued me.”

Kevin agrees. He said the Winchester floor plan was really nice, and getting to see the model home at the Portage office helped immensely.

While the process moved quickly, it’s never without its challenges. Kevin said the hardest part of the process was the design phase.

“It was exciting, but making so many choices was daunting,” Kevin said. “Wayne Homes does a great job of explaining what needs to happen at each step of the process. It was so nice to have guidance in term of permits, clearing the land, etc.”

Once that was out of the way, it was smooth sailing.

Part of what made their experience go so well was the communication between them and the team. Sometimes they’d reach out to their New Home Consultant, Brandi Moss, to find out who they needed to talk to for various parts of the process. Most often, she would respond to say not to worry about it because she’d reach out for them and get an answer. Kevin and Karrah said, “That was so nice because we felt like we were in good hands.” During the build, they said that Ray (their Field Manager) was always a phone call or a text away. They said they ran into minimal issues, but Ray was quick to resolve them when they did come up.

Kevin got their German Shepherd, Scout, when Scout was 16 weeks old.

Originally, he was just going to be a pet. As he was training him, Kevin noticed that Scout showed an interest in more challenging training scenarios. He was super energetic and eager to work and please. So Kevin started doing some search and rescue training with Scout. According to Kevin, Scout really excelled at that.

A few years ago, Kevin got involved with Ohio Task Force 1 because he knew a couple of people who were involved with the team. It seemed Scout might be a good fit to join the Ohio Task Force 1.

Kevin said, “They just have a really cool mission which is: going out to disasters (both natural and human-made) to, as the top priority, search for people and make rescues or recover people’s loved ones when they’ve been lost as a result of a disaster. To me, that was super gratifying to start to help with that.”

Scout’s focus is on recovering deceased victims in disaster situations. When Kevin joined the taskforce, he needed a dog who could help to find those who were still alive. Ohio Task Force 1 matched him with a dog, Sherwood, who started out training with Canine Companions. Now, Sherwood is trained in “live find” – searching for missing people, specifically in disaster environments.

Both Scout and Sherwood tested in what is called a Certification Evaluation, which makes the dogs deployable in a disaster scenario.

First, they had to complete an FSA (Foundational Standards Assessment) consisting of agility, obedience, and searching. It’s an extremely rigorous training process to be approved for the task force.

Kevin’s interest and talent in training dogs all started with Scout.

During obedience training with him, Kevin learned so much about how dogs learn, how to reinforce behaviors, and how to get them to do what you want them to do. There are ways to make sure they’re getting rewarded for doing what you want them to do and that they are enjoying doing it. The dogs who succeed in the task force are those who have a natural will to hunt and then you’re able to hone in on those behaviors. Kevin said, “Being able to do this for a really good purpose is so rewarding.” Karrah agrees, “Kevin loves doing this, and I’m happy to support him doing what he loves.” Kevin emphasized that he wouldn’t be able to do this without the support of Karrah, as well as their parents.

The connections and relationships among those in the K9 search and rescue community has been key.

Kevin started attending search and rescue trainings once a month, as well as other weekly maintenance trainings. And he’s been dedicated to it ever since. The dogs can only work with the handler they’ve been certified with. So when they’re deployed to help with a disaster, Kevin is also deployed. Most recently, Kevin, Scout, and Sherwood were deployed to assist FEMA after Hurricane Debby.

There is ongoing training needed in order to make sure the dogs are ready to work when called.

For example, they have a dog-specific treadmill that the dogs are on every day. Making sure they have strong endurance is important, especially when considering that many disaster scenarios (like hurricanes) occur in more tropical areas where there are higher temperatures. It’s important that the dogs have the endurance to work in those environments. The dogs also do regular exercises – similar to the type of exercises humans do. For example, they do squats to make sure that their rear legs are just as strong as their front legs. They need to be able to jump high.

As Kevin puts it, “It’s incredible to watch a dog navigate a tall structure or a rubble pile like it’s nothing. They’re able to gracefully navigate difficult terrain to search and accomplish their mission. They’re driven and want to please their handler so they are excited to do it.”

Service dogs are trained to assist people with medical or physical needs, such as vision impairment, diabetes, etc.

They help their person throughout the day with various needs – alerting them to a medical emergency, helping them navigate where they are going, getting their medications, etc. Service dogs are fantastic. “Working dogs,” like Scout and Sherwood who are trained in live find and human remains detection, are a little different. Working dogs are also found in law enforcement, such as those trained in locating narcotics, tracking, etc. For Kevin, there are many parallels between his work as a fire fighter and his work with the dogs. He said “it’s almost like you’re addicted to being in that environment and helping in a crisis situation.” While others may panic in an emergency, Kevin thrives and is excited to help, along with Scout and Sherwood.

We were thrilled to get to know the Butskos family and their hard-working dogs! Thank you for sharing your story! For more information about the Urban Search & Rescue Task Force, check out this site.

Do you have a question for our team? We’re here to help! Contact us.

About Wayne Homes

Wayne Homes is a custom homebuilder in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia (see all Model Home Centers). We offer more than 50 fully customizable floorplans and a team dedicated to providing the best experience in the home building industry. For more information, Ask Julie by Live Chat or call us at (866) 253-6807.

Disclaimer: The details of this blog are accurate as of the publish date, but are subject to change.