It may sound like something out of a spy movie, but it’s true. We actually have a K9 unit here at Schendel to help us sniff out bed bugs. In the same way that dogs can detect drugs and firearms, they are able to determine where living bed bugs or their eggs are in a home or business.
 
How does it work?
 
A bed bug inspection is quite different from an inspection you can expect from a pest control professional. If you hire an expert, they will have to move some things around, turn down bedspreads, pull up sheets, and slide furniture away from the wall to inspect carpet edges and baseboards. It is quite a process; but with bed bug dogs, none of these steps are required. During a bed bug inspection, none of the items in a room need to be disturbed. This makes K9 inspection much faster and less invasive.
 
How much faster is a K9 bed bug inspection?
 
If you hire a pest control professional who is good at what he does, he will be able to move through a typical room in about 15 to 20 minutes. Our canine unit can do the same room in under 3 minutes. And, on a larger scale, our bed bug inspectors can work through about 20 hotel rooms or 10 apartments in an hour. When you compare that to 3 to 4 rooms an hour that a human inspector can do, it’s no contest.
 
How are dogs able to do this so quickly?
 
The sense of smell that dogs have is almost like x-ray vision. When they take a whiff of a bed they can smell the fabric softener used to make the blanket fluffier. They can smell the wood in the bed frame. They can smell the perfume left on the pillow case. Every scent is brought into their nose all at once and processed. Unlike sound, the smells don’t cancel each other out. That means that if the scent of living bed bugs is present, the dog will immediately know.
 
How accurate are dogs at finding bed bugs?
 
Let’s talk numbers. Bed bug sniffing dogs are 98% accurate. 98%? You mean they aren’t 100% accurate? Before you get too caught up on that 2% you should know that a typical pest professional is only about 40-60% accurate. It’s true. The bugs can be hard to detect. K9s have shown themselves to be the absolute best method for finding these bugs.
 
If you would like to learn more about these amazing dogs, or any other bed bug services we offer please feel free to give us a call. We’d love to tell you more. They are truly amazing. We couldn’t do what we do without them.