Whether "organized" or not, I am still dealing with clutter. And that is ok as long as I have access from both sides.
It is hard to see in this picture, but I did not have access to the walls of the room. Sniffing requires that my nose has access to all things to be sniffed at. Bugs may be hiding behind the walls, so I need to sniff close to the walls and the outlets to detect them.
I use my high-tech nose to sniff out bed bugs: HIGH_TECH because I have 200 millions sniffing cells compares to YOUR measly 5 millions.
I may be a regal beagle but I am not SuperBeagle! So please, be nice and help me out.
Inspected a couple of rooms in the Altzheimer's wing of this Senior retirement and care facility near Billerica MA. We also were tasked to inspect a hallway with some chairs and couches as well as a living/TV room area.
According to the executive director, a nurse had found on 2 occasions within a short timespan a bed bug crawling on this poor old woman's clothing, once in her room and once in the hallway on the couch.
The inspection resulted in no alerts, which brought a huge sigh of relief for the executive director. However, she wanted to know what else she could do to prevent an infestation from going out of control.
I suggested to have a candid talk with the family of this elder woman as most likely someone in the family keeps bringing in bedbugs when visiting. And to offer to have an inspection of their home conducted as well as have their home treated if needed, all of this at the expense of the facility. Think about it! In the end, the facility will save a lot of money getting to the source of the problem and helping with the cost of treatment rather than wait for an infestation to get out of control.
I was pleased to see that she wholeheartedly agreed with me.
Malamar taking a nap after a canine bed bug inspection job in Allston today. A multi-units apartment complex, basically rented out to college students. Ah! the days of College. Long gone, so much fun indeed. But I certainly do not remember living in such disastrous, messy, cluttery, dirty conditions. Especially the kitchen area.
Oh well! Malamar is perfect for this type of inspection job. She just follows my lead and sniffs out everywhere and everything. She was not too distracted by a cat that was running loose in one of the units. Genrally, she would go wild at the sight or smell of a cat. And another unit has a dog in it.
Kudos to Malamar who just behaved.
Off to Carlisle, MA for yet another residential bed bug inspection. These people were helping their sisters move out and into a new apartment. And found out she had had a bed bug infestation. So now they want to know if they brought those great hitchhickers back into their home. I get a lot of these types of requests. Off we go, Nicki and Malamar and I...
Lately we have been doing bed bug dog inspections all over the place in VT, RI, Boston, Newton, Allston, Somerville and we are on the brink of landing a big contract with a well-known, large property management company for repeat business. Kudos to Nicki and Malamar!
Yes, indeed! Can't tell you which reputable, world-renowned resort is having problems with bed bug infestations because I swore my client I would not divulge the name ot it. It turns out that she went to this resort on vacation a month or so ago and her son got bitten all over his little body.
Upon returning back home, she called the resort to find out if they had had a problem with bed bugs on the room they were in.
2 weeks later, the resort confirmed the bed bug infestation.
The rest is history. We got a phone call to K9- inspect her home that day.
Fortunately, neither dogs alerted. It was interesting to learn that the resort had requested that 2 independent canine inspections be performed within a week from each other. They paid of course for all the charges, the travel costs, lodging and then some to their clients.
I could tell you more but it would have to be in dog language. They really don't want humans to know...
Getting back to IPM which stands for Integrated Pest Management.
The major components are:
- Inspection
- Educate yourself
- Cultural and Mechanical Control
- Biological Control
- Chemical Control
- Monitoring
Fundamentally, bed bug dogs are the perfect tools for the Inspection and Monitoring phases of IPM.
During Inspection, the mantra is identify, identify, identify. It is important to properly identify the pest so that you know what to do and where to target your efforts.
The dog is the best candidate for inspecting and identifying bed bug infestations because it uses its nose to detect the scent of live bed bugs and eggs. Also it does this very quickly (3 minutes on average for a bedroom compared to 30 minutes for a human visual inspection) and it does this with an average 90% better accuracy that a 30% equivalent of a human inspection. This is because it can sniff out the scent in places that a person cannot see.
I have had so many calls for bed bug bites from people with no evidence of bed bugs. My latest call was from a woman who used steam treatment herself of all her belongings to get rid of them. Then my dogs were called in to do an inspection and they did not alert. She finally showed me "the bug" that caused her anxiety and upon closer inspection it turned out to be a head louse. I saved her a lot of potential bed bug treatment expenses. Next time I'll address the Monitoring aspect of the IPM program.
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