Malamar, our exhausted beagle
Malamar, after a hard day's work in Boston - multi-unit apartment complex. Sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite you.....
We had to search 4 rooms, 2 had distractors and 2 had vials of live bed bugs. Our beagles were stupendous! Great job girls!
On schedule to conduct our routine bed bug inspection with our dogs in this hotel in Worcester.
The dogs love this environment because they are familiar with it now that we've been doing routine inspections at this site for about a year now.
Nicki has a tendency to skip with her hind legs when she is happy. It is funny to watch! We then know that this is bound to be a good inspection.
She sniffed those rooms so well that you could hear her sniffing noises. It really makes me wonder if she might inhale a bed bug if she comes across one with such powerful and close sniffing.
That reminds me that actually many people have asked me what she does when she finds them and if she eats them. I think it's funny that people think that dogs would eat bed bugs. On the other hand, they will go and snap at a bee or fly if one buzzes by. But in this case, it is the noise that drive them crazy.
Our motto is work as you train, train as you work.
We have done very few of this type of work with the dogs. So we rented out a roll-away bed from Taylor Rental to prepare our beagles for this type of sniffing.
They have been training hard and are ready to tackle this job. This 5-star hotel has had to rent these cots in preparation for the Marathon that is taking place this coming week.
Maybe Nicki and Malamar should run in the Marathon too ...
We got a call from this person in Lexington who wanted a K-9 inspection done the same day of his call, Friday that is. Evidently, he was upset.
He did not have bed bugs, however his son-in-law had gotten bed bug bites recently and him and his family were visiting for Easter.
Now, their other daugther and her family were scheduled to visit as well, however refused to do so unless a canine bed bug inspection was performed and he house declared cleared.
Come Nicki and Malamar to the rescue! And, yes they sniffed out the house inside and out, as well as their car. And yet, no alerts.
The parents were so relieved and so happy to be able to have the entire family for Easter and peace of mind.
Nicki and Malamar were tasked with sniffing out this lady's car in her driveway. She had helped out her mom with cleaning out her house and moving loads of clothing and such, to be laundered properly as a result of a bed bug infestation.
How did she know her mother had bed bugs? She slept over and woke up with a bed bug in her ear, so she proclaimed. She was out of her wits, this poor lady.
So she used her car to bring these bags full of clothing to the laundromat. Sure enough, after a few days, she started to get bitten in her car. She had learned that laundry bags should have been sealed properly before moving them. Unfortunately, she had the bags wide open.
Nicki and Malamar did not alert however. But this lady was so sure it was bed bugs that she decided to have her car fumigated anyway.
The moral of the story: Seal your laundry bags properly before moving them to another location such as the laundry room in your house otherwise you risk to disperse these great hitchhikers.
Monday night, we gave a K-9 bed bug inspection demonstration in front of the Southern Worcester County Landlord Association. About 40 people showed up for their monthly meeting.
Both Malamar and Nicki took turns to sniff out the viles of bed bugs that were hidden in some boxes and luggages amidst other items on the floor that contained either nothing or distractors such as ham, cheese, dead bugs and carpet beetles .
We use distractors in our training to ensure that they only alert on bed bugs and only LIVE live bed bugs.
Nicki and Malamar received a volley of applause from the audience.
It was funny to see the audience starting to scratch themselves when Brian White from Protech gave his presentation on bed bugs and how they are spreading in Central Mass.
There was a lot of interest in our dogs amongst this audience and we walked away with many business cards.
Nice job Nicki and Malamar!
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