From single-family homes to hotels, halls of residence and even air craft, bed bugs are being found everywhere. Fortunately, there are new weapons in the bed bug fight. Scent-detecting dogs specially trained to locate bed bugs are scouring rooms and pinpointing the location of these elusive pests. If faced with a possible bed bug infestation, every day counts. The surest and fastest counterattack is a coordinated response of early detection and treatment. Reliable detection dogs save time and money.
What are bed bugs and where do they come from?
Bed bugs are a nocturnal reddish brown oval insect about the size of an apple seed. Bed bugs survive by sucking blood from a host animal prefferably a human. Infestation has been on the increase for the past decade, increase in foreign travel and a resistance to pesticides are responsible. Bedbugs can hitch a ride in luggage and even on person’s clothes, and once they’re in a building they can breed quickly laying hundreds of eggs and can survive without feeding for months.
Do bed bug sniffer dogs work?
Bed bugs are masters of the art of stealth. Because of their size and shape bed bugs are able to hide in cracks the width of a playing card. So when locating just a few bed bugs, detection dogs have a distinct advantage over human visual inspections. This is supported by recent research by the University of Florida which proves that dogs are 98% effective and finding infestation.
Adam Gregory is a former police officer and using his experience founded Canine Detection Services specifically to search for bed bugs in hotels, hostels and now university accommodation and private student houses.
Adam: “As we’ve seen from the US the bed bug pandemic is only going to get worse in the UK, and landlords need to be aware that lawsuits concerning bed bugs bites are costing tens of thousands of dollars in the US”.
Adam has trained two bed bug dogs both English Springer spaniels called Bobby and Holly, the same breed most commonly used by police as sniffer dogs. Adam “several weeks of training goes into each bed bug detection dog along with regular continutation training to keep the dogs in top form”.
Adam is one of only a few civilians licensed by the home office for detection of explosives with a dog, and as he puts it “if the home office trusts me to search for bombs with a dog then clients should have confidence in me and my dogs to search for bed bugs”.
Canine Detection services can offer a fast, effective and impartial search of all accommodation and communal areas and can provide statements of work should legal action be taken.
www.caninedetectionservices.co.uk
0845 519 7643
