Our K9 team has never failed a mandatory certification, even as our K9 team continues to be one of the most experienced bed bug detection teams in the country.   In looking at the NESDCA website, we’re noticing that many teams that were certified in 2011 are no longer certified now.  It can be because the team is no longer actively detecting bed bugs, or it can be because the team has stopped certifying their K9, or, because the team failed their most recent certification.   It can’t be stressed enough how important 3rd party certification is in the overall process of the bed bug K9 detection industry.  A K9 inspection company can advertise that it’s K9 was trained by a “certified dog trainer,” but that’s not what proper certification is.  Certification means that a 3rd party has verified that a K9 team is able to perform the job it was trained to do successfully.

One reason NESDCA is an accepted industry standard for bed bug detecting K9′s is because it maintains evaluators with no vested interest in the outcome of the certification.   NESDCA determines whether a team can find hidden bed bugs or not.  It’s this simple:  if a team can find hidden bed bugs, it passes, and if it can’t, it fails.   What NESDCA stresses constantly is how important the ongoing training of a K9 is to the process of successful re-certification, and they’ll cite a lack of training when teams fail their certification.  We certainly agree with their analysis, and continue to train and re-inforce our K9′s training on a daily basis.

When making your bed bug K9 inspection decision, being able to determine whether or not a K9 is certified, and then, which organization certified the K9, is a must.

Instance 1:  We received a call from a mother who’s child received bites while riding in the back seat of her car.  The child was bitten on her foot 3 times, and it wasn’t until a few minutes after the 3rd bite that the child felt an itching sensation on her foot.   This family was certain that the child did not have the bites before getting into the car.  When I met the family later that day, there was no doubt in my mind the bites were a classic triangular bed bug pattern.

Instance 2:  A woman noticed that there was a bug on her car door, but wasn’t sure what kind of bug it was.  She taped the bug to her door, and when I drove to her house, it was clearly an adult-size bed bug.

Instance 3:  In a case where someone had a bed bug infestation in their home, his worries about his car became well-founded when we trapped a bed bug inside a Climb-Up Insect Interceptor – utilizing vials of recently-fed bed bugs as the attractant.

Instance 4:  one passenger in a car noticed a bed bug on the shoulder of another passenger.

If you’ve obtained a bed bug infestation, you can start to think of the ways you transported the bugs home with you, and your car will become one of the possibilities.   For that reason, a bed bugs that has hitchhiked inside of your car may station itself there, and our experience is that a bed bug may not always be able to move quickly enough towards a person (or item) when given the chance.

In the meantime, what action(s) can you take towards clearing your car of a possible infestation?   Without question, a part of your car treatment plan should include cleaning your car thoroughly, and vacuuming it just as thoroughly.

A thing to keep in mind is that if you chose a do-it-yourself option that involves spraying your car with pesticides, keep in mind that all insecticides are specifically labeled, and those instructions should be followed at all times.  Also, always protect your eyes, mouth, and hands while applying any insecticide.   Lastly, take every precaution to insure you are not applying an insecticide that may leave behind an undesired stain on your vehicle’s upholstery.

A product such as Bedlam is generally safe, but keep in mind that it is a pesticide with an active ingredient – it should be applied very carefully, and not applied near the dashboard or near any electrical components.   An advantage of Bedlam is, it is misty when applied, and can seep into areas inside a car where a bed bug may be concealed, especially underneath car seats.  Also, it dries very quickly.

Another sensible option is to utilize an environmentally-safe pesticide.  One such option is Essentria Broadcast Insecticide.   There is no active ingredient attached to this product (as it contains natural plant oils), it is generally non-staining, and it smells very fresh (so fresh, in fact, that you’ll probably want to neutalize its odor with an air freshener).

If you’re going to treat your car, you’ll want to give your treatment at least 4-6 hours to work effectively, and not use your car during this time.  Your car windows should be kept closed.   When you’re ready to use your car again, I’d advise air-freshening your car first, and then driving with the windows open to ventilate your car effectively.

An important thing to keep in mind is that as the summer approaches, there will be many hot days where the interior of your car will heat well above the degree required to eliminate a bed bug.  Generally, 120 degrees will be sufficient to eliminate bed bugs over the course of a day, but 140 degrees and higher will eliminate bed bugs within hours, or even minutes, depending on the sections of your car that are shaded and non-shaded.  For this reason, we’ve instructed many of our customers with bed bug infestations to place bagged items inside their car on hot days – items they’re concerned about, but which they don’t wish to have inseecticide-treated – and parking their car facing direct sunlight.   Also, there would be no reason to insecticide-treat your car on a very hot day.

Another sensible option (should you have access to one) would be a steamer, but it goes without saying that you’d want to be extremely careful as you apply that heat, again avoiding the dashboard area and any electrical components.

Lastly, if you believe your car may have an infestation, but you would prefer to have a pest control professional handle your problem, reach out to a licensed company that has experience treating cars (which may be hard to find).

But what if the home inspector stood to benefit from the inspection by seeking out a repair opportunity?  For this (and other) reasons, state laws have mandated that a home inspector cannot perform any corrective action to a home they’ve inspected, nor can they recommend a contractor or repair person at a home they’ve inspected.   The reason:  conflict of interest.   Plain and simple, the person inspecting the home shouldn’t have a vested interest in the outcome of the inspection, nor should his or her inspection be influenced by the possibility of benefitting from a defect. 

For bed bug inspections, we believe that the inspection should follow the same guideline, and it’s what we’ve always provided at Atlantic Bed Bug Inspection – a qualified, independent inspection being performed by an experience team that has no vested interest in the outcome of the inspection.  We were one of the first companies in the nation to provide this service, expecting this would be the inspection the public would prefer, if it were available.  The experience and expertise we’ve gained inspecting for bed bugs for the past 5 years now rivals that of any company nationally – including the largest, licensed pest control companies.  

Our bed bug inspections are not only non-vested interest, but they’re conducted by someone who was performing bed bug visual inspections on a regular basis before utilizing a highly-trained K9 to do so.   In fact, our bed bug inspections were exceeding the standards recently suggested by the National Pest Management Association before those standards were even initiated.  Additionally, the level of K9 that we employ exceeds every national guideline in terms of training and certification. 

Through it all, we’ve maintained our independent status at every turn:

* We generate no income whatsoever from bed bug remediation. 

* We’ve never received so much as a single dollar from a pest control company that provided bed bug remediation based on our findings. 

* We’ve turned down every offer from pest control companies to refer business to them for a % of profit. 

* We don’t utilize our K9 to benefit from a bed bug presence, as nearly all pest control companies that own their own K9′s do. 

* We’re not an affiliation of a pest control company, nor were we incorporated by one (which is something many pest control companies have done in order to generate more business).   

* We’re a company that had experience inspecting for bed bugs prior to purchasing a K9 (which is not the case for nearly every independent bed bug inspection company out there).  

We suggest that any pest control company offering bed bug K9 detection service should always be doing so through a third-party, independent inspection company, and it’s what the best, most-honest pest control companies do.  They will indicate as much on their website, or when they’re asked over the phone, so that any conflict of interest is removed. 

As an experienced, licensed pest control company will always be your best way to solve a bed bug problem, your bed bug inspection is best left in the hands of an experienced, independent bed bug inspector, when and where it’s available.

We spent the week before Christmas getting our K9 additional training at the academy that trained her -  J&K Canine Academy, in High Springs, Florida.  We’ve committed a minimum of 2 weeks per year towards this endeavor (even though it’s not required), doing all we can to insure that our dog is working as optimally as possible at all times.   “Rockie” is in good hands when kenneled at J&K, and receives the best ongoing training and observation available nationally.   As we’ve pointed out, only J&K can take credit for the 97.5% accuracy statistic in finding bed bugs that the rest of the industry is borrowing.

As 2012 rolls in, we feel that while the bed bug problem is being suppressed on some counts, we performed bed bug inspections along a wider radius in 2011.  We received calls from upstate New York, to Washington D.C., to Philadelphia, and those were not calls we’d received in 2010 or before.   It tells us that the problem is spreading.  Two companies that distribute pesticides confirmed to us that their bed bug pesticide-sales grew from 2010 to 2011 .  One of those companies told us that while sales were down slightly in the tri-state area, sales had increased on a national basis. 

We also physically found some of the largest bed bug infestations we’ve seen yet in 2011, mostly in New York City, but also on a few occasions in New Jersey.  The locations of these largest infestations were in single-family private homes, and in apartments.  Apartment building residents continue to be at risk because there continues to be tenants who are not aware they have a bed bug infestation until the problem is well out of hand.  Typically, these are tenants who are not reacting to bed bug bites and have no reason to expect a problem, or, sometimes elderly people who may lack mobility or who have poor eyesight.  Property managers of these apartment buildings are often blindsided by these very large infestations that are detected much too late.

We’ve continued to see growth not only in companies that remediate bed bugs, but also in companies that are inspecting for them.  Some newer bed bug inspection companies have replaced others that no longer operate.   Companies that purchased bed bug detecting K9′s have learned first-hand how challenging maintaining the dogs can be, and on the NESDCA-certification website, we’ve seen many companies that have had to replace handlers, and other companies that are certifying many handlers in case of handler turnover.  As one of the most important parts of the K9 inspection process is the relationship between the handler and dog, revolving handlers is not a positive development.  A dog’s ability to perform properly can be impacted by a change in handlers, and indeed, we’ve noticed that dogs that were certified in 2010 were no longer certified in 2011. 

Our pledge in 2012 is to provide our customers with the highest level of experienced, independent bed bug inspection available on a national basis.  Our dog has passed all her mandatory certifications, and has only worked with one handler since she first became certified.   Our K9 team has performed as many independent residential inspections as any team in the country, and our sales pitch is, while we hope you don’t have a bed bug infestation (and we sincerely hope you don’t), you need to know if you do.  Our inspection team will not create a problem that doesn’t exist, but if you wind up having a bed bug problem, we’ll help you begin to solve your problem immediately.  Our bed bug experience is wide-ranging, from being completely famililar with every kind of remediation method available, to providing a first-class inspection, to having preventative measures available should you need them.  We continue to welcome your questions, and will always take the time necessary to address all of your concerns professionally and courteously.

The industry statistic attributed to a dog’s accuracy rate in finding bed bugs is 97.5%, and that’s an excellent percentage.  Yet, there’s only one company in the country that can provide documentation that their dogs tested to that rate, and that’s J&K Canine Academy in High Springs, FL.   The doumentation they can provide is the study that they subjected their dogs to, which was compiled by a 3rd party: the University of Florida.  The U of F monitored and confirmed the ability of J&K’s dogs to detect the presence of live bed bugs to that percentage, in an environment where dogs were penalized for false positives, and where distractors (non-bed bugs, dead bed bugs) were in place to insure their dogs were capably able to differentiate what they were trained to search for.

I’ve seen two pest control companies in the news recently that borrowed this 97.5% statistic when affirming the quality of their company-owned inspection dogs, and while their intention was earnest, their dogs were not J&K Canine graduates.   In an environment where some companies are self-training their dogs, or using local kennels to provide scent-detection K9 training, it goes without saying that any trainer’s claim of any accuracy rate should be documented & available upon request.   Additionally, a K9′s certification should be upholding that dog’s training to the highest standard, as NESDCA (National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association) does when it certifies a J&K-trained dog.

Having one of J&K’s graduates certainly adds to our confidence when we’re hired to perform bed bug inspections throughout the tri-state area, and we never hesitate to promote the dog’s training background.   If you have any additional questions about a dog’s detection capability, please call us anytime and we’ll be happy to explain in further detail.

When a person has unknowingly brought a bed bug infestation into their home (or workplace, etc), they’ve either brought in a non-fertile single bed bug, or, more than one bed bugs at once, or, a single fertile female bed bug with the ability to reproduce. Certainly, if you’re going to get an infestation, the first scenario is without question the best case to have. You’ll be able to remediate the problem much more quickly.

We performed an inspection recently that was quite possibly a 1 bed bug infestation:

When we arrived at the customer’s apartment, the customer showed me the series of bites she had talked about on the phone. Having seen many bed bug bites over the past few years, her bites clearly resembled those performed by a bed bug. She had bites in 2 different areas: first, a 3-bite pattern on her leg, and then, a couple of bites on her arm. She said she’d received the first set of bites 8 days earlier, and then the most recent ones on her arm the night before (which is why she called us). It’s not good news at all that she was receiving bites, but, it was good that she was having a reaction to the bites – her welts were very noticeable, even the ones still present from 8 days ago – and her reaction triggered her phone call.

Rockie (our bed bug dog) and I performed a detailed search of the apartment, and our search yielded no positive alerts (an alert is the indication the dog gives that there is a live bed bug presence) until we entered the customer’s bed room. There, our dog alerted to the right side of her mattress/boxspring. The alert took place on the side of the bed that the customer sleeps on, and it was the only alert we received in that room. We finished the inspection, and the dog didn’t alert anywhere else in the apartment.

Upon visual inspection, I lifted up the mattress, checked both sides thoroughly, and found nothing except a few droppings near the seam of the mattress. The droppings were an indication that a live bed bug had had a feeding, and then relieved itself, in that spot. But a bed bug itself was not there. When I checked the boxspring, that’s when we found a culprit – 1 very large bed bug sitting right on the underside lip of the boxspring – in full view once the boxspring was turned over. The customer could see that it was a large bed bug full of blood, and I found it exactly where the dog had alerted. Keeping in mind that a dog will provide the same alert whether there’s 1 bed bug present or more than 1 bed bug present, I continued to search, and found no other bugs. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t any more bed bugs present (they are extremely difficult for humans to find, especially when small infestations are present), but there weren’t any more that I was able to find. (a sidenote here: Boxsprings are particularly difficult to search, because of the vacancies and underlying mesh that can conceal & camouflage a bed bug – especially smaller bed bugs).

Given everything we learned during the search, this was a location where it was possible that only 1 bed bug was present. The customer had a bite pattern that resembled the presence of 1 bed bug, and I happened to find one live bed bug. My advice to the customer was to still take actions to eliminate & control a bed bug presence, because there’s obviously the potential of more bed bugs being present. She purchased a mattress and boxspring cover from us (at a wholesale price), as well as Climbup interceptors, and put them in place immediately on the 4 corners of her bed frame legs. If any more bed bugs were present on either the mattress or inside the boxsping, she’d trapped them right away. Any service that ensued could now be targeted within the room, including the areas closest to the bed where there could still be a live bed bug presence. She also purchased do-
it-yourself, safe pesticides that she was going to apply on the bed frame and surrounding areas the next day, right before she knew she’d be out of the apartment for a while ( in order to avoid any unpleasant pesticide odor at the time of application).

These actions gave her a great chance of controlling any bed bug presence within her sleeping quarters. I’ll add here that licensed pest control company service should always be considered when a bed bug infestation exists, because a good company has the experience and resources needed to bring an infestation under control, and well-concealed fertile bed bugs can and will reproduce very quickly if a do-it-yourself approach is not successful. Yet, sometimes, a person can take action that can start to bring a bed bug infestation under control quickly, especially if a small number of bed bugs are present. Or in some cases, 1 bed bug.

In our case, I had already performed hundreds of visual bed bug inspections in New York and New Jersey before making a decision to incorporate a new company that would solely provide independent bed bug dog inspections. In making this decision, we relied on the opinion of some of the best pest control companies in New York City – that 3rd-party, independent bed bug inspections were the most conclusive, yet most honest inspection available. These companies advertised as much on their websites: if you hired their company to do a dog inspection, they would sub-contract an independent company to perform the bed bug inspection, so that the result of the inspection (positive for bed bugs or not) could be trusted, and would not further benefit that inspection company in any way.

Those companies were correct, and shift # 1 was underway: independent bed bug inspections would become the industry standard. As a result, our business model prospered (along with other independent inspection companies) during the summer and fall of 2010, when the ability of dogs to find bed bugs became front page news. One of our biggest sources of advertising at one point was The Late Show with David Letterman, who would joke about bed bugs for nights on end in his monologues. Yet as funny as his jokes were, the problem was very real, and we were finding bed bug infestations on a regular basis for weeks on end.

By the turn of the year, there was a flood of new businesses that were hitting the market advertising independent dog inspections. People who had purchased their bed bug dogs in the fall had waited the 3-4 months until their dogs were trained and ready to work. Additionally, pest control companies who had previously hired independent companies to perform their inspections were now purchasing their own dogs. Training facilities were readying dogs as quickly as possible to keep up with demand. Yet for many of us already performing inspections, we saw shift # 2 coming, simply because we were out in the field hearing our customer’s concerns on a daily basis. One case in point occurred in the fall of 2010…

At one point last fall, we were hired to perform individual inspections within an apartment building in Bergen Couuty, New Jersey. More specifically, we were hired because many of the tenants were questioning the findings of the 1st bed bug dog inspection their building had contracted, where we learned in a 200+ unit building a dog had detected the presence of bed bugs in over 80 apartments. However, most of those tenants had never seen a bed bug, or experienced any bed bug bites. When we wound up re-inspecting 20 of those units, our dog didn’t detect a bed bug presence in any of those apartments. The end result was 2 separate bed bug inspections being performed in 20 apartments that had yielded 2 entirely different results.

Now, I know dogs can accurately detect the presence of bed bugs, and that K9 inspections are without question the best bed bug inspection method available. When J&K Canine Academy dogs were independently tested by the University of Florida, they were found to be 97.5% accurate in finding bed bugs in a hotel room environment, and the U of F published that study. In fact, the 97.5% statistic that the industry refers to when validating the ability of dogs to find bed bugs can be attributed to only one company, and that’s to the bed bug detecting dogs at J&K Canine.

But what went wrong at the apartment building in New Jersey, and what does it have to do with shift #2?

Shift # 2 became the public’s insistence that a company performing a bed bug dog inspection be qualified to perform a visual inspection in order to support a dog’s findings, particularly in the event of a positive alert, and especially as margins for error within a K9 team’s findings were often distinguishable from company to company.

But what had happened since the summer of 2010 until now? Dogs were entering the marketplace where the business owner and dog handler (usually the same person) had no visual inspection experience whatsoever. Training facilities were rushing dogs to market without the right amount of training, or without the highest level of certification. Some dog training facilities were certifying their own dogs, without relying on a stringent 3rd party standard. Pest control companies were purchasing dogs where not only did they have a vested interest in finding a bed bug infestation, but even they were hiring handlers with no bed bug inspection experience. Many pest control companies were also experiencing turnover with their handlers, which is critical when the inspection is so reliant upon the dog & handler relationship. Any combination of these scenarios could have resulted in what happened at that apartment building in New Jersey, but to those tenants who were told they had a bed bug infestation that probably didn’t exist, the result was unacceptable.

As we’re beginning our 2nd year of utilizing a bed bug detecting canine, we continued to do all we can to provide the most qualified, honest bed bug inspection available. As you perform your due diligence in making a decision on which company to hire for your bed bug inspection, I can vouch for what we’ll offer should we be fortunate enough to receive your inspection business:

1. An independent, no vested-interest inspection

2. A dog that’s received the highest level of training in the industry, combined with the highest standard of certification available

3. A dog that doesn’t over-detect

4. A handler with as much visual experience as any handler currently inspecting for bed bugs, and who will make an effort to support the findings of the dog

5. A willingness to answer all of your questions in a qualified, patient manner – at the time of inspection, as well as any time you may call before or afterward

The NESDCA certification process insures that our bed bug dog’s ability to find bed bugs has been tested and verified by an independent organization, and that the highest standards for Entomology Scent Detection Canines are being followed.

The process our K9 team had to follow in order to pass our certification is detailed, and I’ve provided a link to anyone interested in knowing exactly what a K9 team has to do to achieve certification:

http://nesdca.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27:nesdca-certification-rules&catid=5:bylawsrules&Itemid=6

In the year since we purchased our bed bug dog, she became one of the most experienced K9’s in the industry for a variety of reasons:

1. Our independent bed bug inspection company status: It became clear that by last summer, public opinion had clearly turned in favor in hiring a bed bug inspection company that had no vested-interest in the outcome of the bed bug search, as opposed to a pest control-owned K9 that had a vested-interest in the outcome. It’s not to say that a dog owned by a pest control company is not qualified to perform an accurate bed bug search. But, with the price of remediation being what it is in the tri-state area, consumers realized it was in their best interest to use independent search companies.
2. The training pedigree: our dog trained at a company (J&K Canine Academy) that exceeds every standard for Entomology Scent Detection Canines that exists.
3. NESDCA certification: Simply put, NESDCA assures that the highest standards for Entomology Scent Detection Canines are being met at all times.
4. Our ability to provide visual inspections: most independent bed bug inspection companies have no visual inspection experience to fall back on. In our case, we’d performed over 2000 individual visual inspections in the 3 years before purchasing a K9 to help us with bed bug detection. While there’s no question that a dog is more qualified to find bed bugs than a human being is, the public has come to expect that a visual inspection accompany the findings of a dog, and we agree. We continue to provide a visual inspection at every location we service.

As we begin our 2nd year of using a dog for bed bug inspections, we assure you that you’ll continue to receive the most qualified, honest bed bug inspection in the industry.