DOGS CAN STOP THE BED BUGS

DOGS HAVE A 98% ACCURACY RATE AT DETECTING . . . BEDBUGS ???

Dogs are famous for using their noses to detect bombs, drugs, money, bodies . . . even melanoma. But did you know they can also be trained to detect . . . bedbugs?

An experiment at the University of Florida found that dogs were 98% accurate in locating bedbugs in hotel rooms. And other research showed that a dog-handler team is faster and more effective at detecting bedbugs than people alone.

I'm telling you about these AWESOME BEDBUG DOGS because we only THOUGHT we eradicated bedbugs: There's been a 500% increase in bedbugs in the past few years. It's mainly because of international travel, and because we banned effective-but-toxic sprays like DDT. Bedbugs can live in mattresses, sofas, books, or cracks in the floor for more than a YEAR without feeding. When they do feed . . . they suck your blood. People think they're too small too see, but they're about the size of an apple seed. And their eggs are the size of two grains of salt. (--Trust me, these things are nasty. I had a friend in New York who got a bed bug infestation. She basically had to move out . . . ditch all her stuff . . . and have a pest company fumigate the place for days. It cost a fortune.)

Bedbugs are small and hard to kill . . . that's where the dogs come in. They have amazingly powerful noses, but their work ethic and their basic desire to please people make them good at pinpointing EXACTLY where the actual, live bugs are. That's important, because when you know which rooms need attention, you can target those rooms, and those rooms only, using pesticides. It's cheaper than a mass fumigation, which costs thousands of dollars.

A guy named Pepe Peruyero trains dogs to find bedbugs at the J&K Canine Academy in High Springs, Florida. When the dogs find a bug, they're taught to "give the paw" or gesture with their nose. Pepe says he can train dogs to distinguish between bedbugs and their eggs . . . and the stuff that doesn't matter, like dead bugs, old skins, hatched eggs, or fecal matter. The dogs end up getting rented out at about $325 an hour. Which is expensive, but still cheaper in the long run. (The Atlantic)

(--Check out a photo of Nudie in action, he's a Chinese Crested-Terrier mix who's trained to find bedbugs . . .)

(--Check out a nasty video about bedbugs from "National Geographic", here . . . the bedbug starts drilling for blood at 1:20.)www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfKCcSPCOQo