From the Road to the Grooming Table

Meet Tina & Chad Brough

Some people find their calling early. Others earn it.

Tina's Story

64 Years. A Million Miles. One True Calling.

Tina Brough is 64 years old, a retired long-haul truck driver, a spinal cord surgery survivor, a recovering alcoholic with 14 years of sobriety, and the proudest mom of 7 Pomeranians and a Chihuahua in Charleston, West Virginia.

She will also be your dog's new favorite person.

The Office Years

For 34 years, Tina worked in a busy office — reliable, steady, and quietly enduring chronic pain that doctors dismissed for years as Fibromyalgia. A catch-all diagnosis. A label that said "we don't really know" while her body was telling a much more serious story.

Through those years, she found an unexpected source of peace: dogs. She raised Pekingese for nearly two decades — and anyone who has loved a breed like that knows it isn't just a hobby. It's a lifestyle, a commitment, and a calling.

2011 — Everything Changed at Once

Tina met Chad on Facebook. He came cross-country. They married a month later — and she'll be the first to tell you he's her last and final husband. That same year, she made one of the hardest and most courageous decisions of her life: she stopped drinking. Completely. April 2011. Not a day since.

With a new marriage, a new chapter, and a hunger for something different, Tina and Chad made an unexpected leap — they became long-haul truck drivers together. In September 2013, they hit the open road as a team, and for years, the cab of that truck was home.

2020 - The Road Changed

Chad broke his foot getting out of the truck and needed surgery. COVID came shortly after — and the second round devastated his lungs. Tina drove solo, pushing through what she thought was manageable pain, until it wasn't manageable anymore.

What had started as numbness and tingling had quietly become something far more serious. The chronic pain she had been told for years was "just Fibromyalgia" turned out to be her spinal cord being slowly, dangerously compressed.

In June 2022, Tina came off the road.

She is now fused with titanium from C2 to T2 — front and back. The surgery was serious. The recovery was hard. And Tina will tell you with absolute conviction: she feels fortunate. She has regained nearly full function. She is here. She is whole. She just can't turn her neck the way truck driving requires.

So she tried phlebotomy. It wasn't for her.

She spent 14 months at Walmart. She's had enough.

Chad's Role

The Steady Hand Beside Her

Chad Brough is Tina's partner in every sense of the word in life, on the road, and now in business. After years of truck driving and navigating his own health recovery, Chad is by Tina's side at Bruff & Buff, bringing the same steadiness and loyalty that brought him cross-country for a woman he met on Facebook and married a month later.

When you bring your dog to Bruff & Buff, you're not handing them to a corporation or a chain. You're placing them in the hands of two people who have lived real, hard, beautiful lives and who have chosen dogs and this community as their next chapter.