“Dog Sniffs Out Bedbugs in Treasure Valley” |
| Dog Sniffs Out Bedbugs in Treasure Valley Posted: 05 Oct 2010 06:01 PM PDT Nampa, Idaho -- Good night, don't let the bedbugs bite! Most of us heard mom or dad say that to us, even though they never seemed real. Well they're for real and making a comeback. One company has a unique solution. Shine K-9 has trained dogs to literally sniff for bedbugs. Bedbugs only eat blood. They go to work at night when you're sleeping and finding them isn't easy. Unless you are Ladybug the bedbug sniffing canine. We met her at a home in Nampa for a demonstration. Her handler hides live bedbugs in two jars, one under the pillow; another under a mattress. "We put the bugs in the areas where they're normally found," said Rosemary Scheihing Now they're training Bob Mitchell and his new canine partner Ladybug to find them. He heard about Ladybug and made her his new partner. "We've needed a tool to be able to not only find bedbugs, but to let people know we can bring the dog through to sniff for them. And if they don't have bedbugs, then that's just as important if you do," said Mitchell, with Capitol Pest. Bedbugs have made a comeback in the U.S. and the Treasure Valley. "We currently have two dogs working. We get two calls a week, just in the Boise Valley, to go look for bedbugs," said Gary Scheihing, the owner of Shine K-9, detection dogs. Scheihing knows dogs. "We've been training drug dogs since the early 90s. Then, about two years ago, a guy from California called to see if we'd be interested in training bedbug dogs. We started doing it and since then we've trained 15 dogs that were sent out of the area to different states," said Scheihing. Dogs can sniff for drugs, they can detect bombs and a lot more. They can smell hundreds of times better than humans. But, can they really smell bedbugs, a bug smaller than a pinhead? "They all put off odor, and anything that puts off odor a dog can find," said Scheihing. "It still amazes me, too. I'm still in awe every time I train another dog. I'm shocked, I am. I never knew anything about bedbugs until I started doing this," said Scheihing. Seeing is believing. So they showed us Ladybug in action. This 2-year-old Labrador is a quick learner. Once she's in the bedroom it doesn't take her long to pick up the scent. "A human visual inspection is only about 40 percent effective. What we found is with these dogs, they're 90 percent effective even with the handler at a 100 percent," said Mitchell. If you suspect you have bedbugs you can call "Capitol Pest", or any other qualified exterminator. The experts say bedbugs have nothing to do with cleanliness. The experts found that in most cases, people who had bedbugs had just came back from a foreign destination. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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