Bed Bug Sniffing Dogs

Most people are aware that police officers use trained dogs to help find drugs.  However, most people aren't aware that the keen sense of smell dogs possess can also be used to detect bed bugs.  While this may sound silly at first, once you stop and think about the significant resurgence of bed bug problems over the last two decades, it actually makes sense to use a dog for this purpose.

Although dogs are born with a keen sense of smell, they do have to be trained to use their sense of smell to detect bed bugs.  While it's conceivable that almost any breed of dog could be trained to detect bed bugs, because of their intelligence, Golden Retrievers and German Shepherds are the two most common types of bed bug sniffing dogs.  To learn how to accurately detect bed bugs, a dog must be trained for around five hundred hours.

Once a dog has completed all of the necessary training, it's accuracy rate for detecting bed bugs will be 90% to 97%.  In comparison, the detection rate of a professional human inspector can be as dismal as 17%.

Because of their high accuracy rate and the demand for their service, using a bed bed sniffing dog is going to be more expensive than other detection methods.  However, you have to take into account that a bed bug sniffing dog will get it right the first time.  If you choose to use a human inspector, there is a good chance that you will end up paying multiple human inspectors before the source of your bed bug problem is discovered.

If you are dealing with a bed bug problem and want to use a bed bug dog to discover the source of your problem, it's important to enlist the help of a dog that is actually trained for this task.  To avoid being ripped off by someone pretending to have a bed bug sniffing dog, make sure that they are licensed and can provide you with proof of the dog's training.  You will also want to find out what kind of extermination options the company offers once the dog discovers the source of your problem.