Finding bedbugs with a dog
Just as you teach a drug dog to look for a number of drugs, you teach a bedbug dog to look for the scent of live bedbugs.
Dogs’ amazing sense of smell enables them to detect extremely small scents. Our dogs are carefully trained to detect live bedbugs at all stages, from eggs to full-grown lice. The dogs are also trained to distinguish between dead lice, feces and shedding shells and mark only live individuals and viable eggs.
Why hire a dog to find bedbugs?
Finding bedbug infestations at the earliest possible stage means minimizing the risk of spread and clean-up time, which also results in saving both time and money.
Eliminate or confirm suspicion
Eliminating or confirming suspected bed bugs is important to guide further action. The vast majority of searches we do for individuals who feel they have been bitten by something do not have road lice. Checking off bedbugs on your list of suspicions is usually the first thing you want to do.
Finding infestations early
Bedbugs have an amazing ability to hide in the smallest of places. The key to a short and easy clean-up is to find bedbug infestations before they have had time to multiply. The dogs' amazing sense of smell means they can find individual bedbugs that are easy to miss during a visual inspection.
Safer
A pest technician has about a 40-60% chance of finding a trace of an early bedbug infestation. A well-trained sniffer dog and handler has an accuracy rate of about 90%.
Our dogs at work
Preventive work
For all types of activities where people stay overnight, sit or lie down for long periods of time.
Bedbugs multiply exponentially, i.e. they become numerous very quickly, and therefore it is incredibly important to detect them as soon as possible! Bringing in a bedbug is not in itself a major problem. It’s no worse than having a mosquito in the room. However, it is a completely different matter if you get a fertilized female or two lice of different sexes. If the lice are not found relatively quickly, you will have a huge problem with thousands of bedbugs within a few months.
Staying ahead of the game and working with preventive controls means that we find infestations at an early stage and therefore minimize them:
- The risk of contagion
- Remediation costs
- The risk of lengthy clean-up operations
- The risk of guests or customers being affected
- The risk of negative reviews
Spread control
When bed bugs have established themselves in a room for a long time (longer than about 4 months), and become very numerous, there is almost always a high risk of spreading.
The spread of a major bedbug infestation can be very extensive depending on the environment. The lack of tightness between rooms and apartments, ventilation systems and people moving around are contributing factors to the unhindered spread of bedbugs.
A resident with a bedbug problem who may not know what is causing the itchy bites on their body and shakes their sheets on the balcony may unfortunately spread the bedbugs to their neighbors. A bedbug can also simply walk right out of an ordinary front door and on to a neighbor.
The risk of spreading is also high in apartments or other spaces that have been evacuated due to the fire. bedbug problem or other reason. Bedbugs are real survivors. If there is no food (humans) in their vicinity, they will, sooner or later, go to where the food is.
Suspicion of bedbugs
Hiring a bedbug dog when bedbugs are suspected can be money well spent to either eliminate or confirm a suspicion. An early detected infection is much easier to remediate.
Very many people do not react to bedbug bites and it is often quite difficult to see the traces left by bedbugs.
There are several reasons why you may suspect that you have bedbugs in your home or business.
Examples of reasonable grounds for suspicion:
- You have had sudden bites or itching on your body
- You have found a bedbug, a shredded shell or dots resembling faeces.
- You have been travelling
- You have stayed in a hotel, hostel, been on a cruise or backpacked (stayed in a boat cabin or slept on a train).
- You have a neighbour who has bedbugs
Securing after decontamination
There is currently no decontamination method that works 100% every time. There are a number of factors that can affect the outcome of a clean-up.
- the size of the bedbug population (how long the problem has been going on)
- The type of space to be decontaminated
- If the decontamination method is correctly adapted to the two above points
- How carefully the precautions have been followed during the clean-up period.
Then there are hundreds of cases where decontamination has been carried out in an exemplary manner and the rules of conduct have been followed to the letter, but they have not managed to get rid of all bedbugs within a reasonable time. Relying on the experience of decontamination is not always advisable. All people are bitten by bedbugs but about 30-40% of the population does not get itchy from the bites. You can also build up a resistance to the bait after some time.
In addition to the fact that a person may stop reacting to bedbug bites, there is also a risk that single eggs, nymphs or adult lice have survived the clean-up due to their incredible ability to find good hiding places. Depending on the type of bedbug (egg, nymph or adult) that has survived decontamination, it can take anywhere from two weeks to three months to discover that you still have bedbugs.
Having a remediation technician try to ensure remediation is far from being a reliable method. It is extremely difficult for a human being to try to find a surviving bedbug on the move or a live egg by sight alone.
Working with a bed bug dog to ensure remediation is a way to have full control over the whole process from detection to clearance.
Book a search dog with Quality Detection Dogs!
We help both individuals and businesses with pest control.