Man depends on dogs for many things. For some, dogs are man’s best friend. Others depend upon them for their safety, work and transportation. Dogs are widely used to sniff out bombs and drugs.
The latest trend among working dogs is to sniff out insects such as bedbugs. Get ready because this means that Fido is going to be all over the furniture in order to accomplish the task at hand. But what’s a little fur compared to bedbugs?
In recent months, bedbugs arrived on the scene in many eastern seaboard areas. Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County is one area that has been hit hard. The phrase “don’t let the bedbugs bite” has taken on a whole new meaning and local folks are cringing while they take all sorts of precautions to keep their homes free of the insects.
Pest control companies have taken to “hiring” insect-sniffing dogs to keep homes and college dorm rooms from being overtaken by the bedbugs. One such company uses a Jack Russell named Jackson to search for the insects. Jackson and his handler are based in Long Island, New York, but they are used to traveling to job sites in other areas of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Jackson has made it as far as Florida where he used his sniffing talents to search a cruise ship.
One might wonder how in the world you train a dog to find insects. Jackson was trained by Iron Heart High Performance Working Dogs in Shawnee, Kansas. His handler says he has an accuracy rate of 95 percent.
Dogs that sniff out insects have a tough job to do. It’s not like finding drugs, which have odors strong enough that a dog can easily detect them. It takes a lot more vigilance on the part of the dog and handler to find insects because the bugs have a much smaller scent cone. This means that a bedbug-sniffing dog has to get right close and personal with the area and everything in it.
Jackson’s handler claims his dog can thoroughly check an average-size room in about five minutes. Jackson works the room by starting with the bed. He then moves on to other areas such as the walls, furniture and around heating ducts or radiators.
If Jackson finds a bedbug, he paws at it and slaps it around. Then he sits down to let his handler know the job is done.
The two-year-old Jack Russell works on a reward system. He usually eats only when he finds bugs. That doesn’t mean Jackson is being starved and abused, but it does mean additional work for his handler who baits a room with captured bedbugs to keep his dog’s nose in good working order. This is also a means of ongoing training, which is important to keeping Jackson on task. During a search of a lot of rooms (such as a college dorm), Jackson’s handler will intermittently place a few bugs around in order to keep the dog interested in the search.
Fortunately dogs like Jackson allow us to get some uninterrupted sleep. Without them, nighttime could be nightmare!
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