06/01/2026
On Thursday, May 28, members of the Columbus Division of Fire’s K9 unit joined Pilot Dogs to mark the completion of the organization’s newly expanded campus.
The community was invited to attend an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Franklinton campus. During the ceremony, Columbus Firefighter, K9 trainer Dennis Hammond spoke about the close relationship between the division and Pilot Dogs. After the ribbon cutting, Columbus Fire explosive detection dogs Newt and Norbert, along with their handlers, firefighters Scott Daly and Elizabeth Finnegan, demonstrated their skills for those in attendance.
Some dogs that begin training in the Pilot Dogs program ultimately prove to be a better fit for another kind of service. In some cases, the same energy and drive that can make a dog less suitable for guide work can become a major asset in explosive or accelerant detection. This has created a wonderful partnership between the two organizations, giving several dogs a new career path.
Before partnering with Pilot Dogs, Hammond said he traveled around the country searching for Labrador retrievers with the right traits for the Columbus Fire K9 unit. Today, three dogs that jokingly “made a career pivot” from Pilot Dogs to the fire division are Kora, Newt and Norbert. Hammond said he has trained a total of eight former Pilot Dogs. The other five are now serving in the Ohio Fire Marshal’s K9 unit and with other first responder agencies around the state.
Hammond said the partnership has been especially valuable because of the opportunities it creates to evaluate dogs in realistic and demanding environments. “The work they do here is incredible,” Hammond said. “When it comes to dogs, we do a separate section of environmental training, we take them into fire scenes. For Jim (Jim Alloway, CEO of Pilot Dogs Inc.) to allow people to bring dogs to live fire scenes for me to test these dogs under the greatest stressors I can test them, and then I can accept that dog into our program is unmeasurable to us. So, I would just like to say thank you to him, thank you to everybody here.”
Founded in 1950, Pilot Dogs helps people with visual impairment gain greater independence through guide dogs and training. Robert Weigand, a Pilot Dogs client, said the organization’s impact reaches beyond fundraising or dog training alone. “Pilot Dogs is not only an organization that raises money to produce guide dogs for blind people, this is an organization that changes lives. It makes lives better,” Weigand said. “Being a blind person is hard, there's no getting around it. It's a rough way to go. Being a dog handler is not an easy thing either. It takes a lot of time and energy and work but being a blind person with a dog is a lot better than being a blind person without a dog, and it’s all thanks to Pilot Dogs.”
