Rich Wilbert searches for bed bugs with his dog, Sara. Dogs are trained to sniff along baseboards, beds and furniture for the pheromones, the faint chemical odor that the insects emit to signal one another. (Michael Nagle / For The Times)
Signs of bed bugs(Michael Nagle / For The Times)
Rich Wilbert points out evidence of bed bugs in an apartment in Jersey City, N.J.
A Dogged Pursuit of Bedbugs
October 21, 2009
By Bob Drogin
(This artice isn't local but a very good synopsis of Bed bugs and Bed bug dogs)
There's high demand for dogs trained to track down the tiny, bloodsucking parasites that have invaded cities in the last four years.
"It can be a very valuable tool," said Richard Cooper, coauthor of the 266-page "Bed Bug Handbook" and a member of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new Bed Bug Advisory Board. "You can work your way through a hotel or a college dorm or a movie theater much more quickly with dogs than just relying on a visual inspection."
But Gary Alpert, an entomologist at Harvard University who specializes in bedbugs, cautions that some pest control companies use dogs as a gimmick to exploit people's fears and to charge more money.
"There are a lot of scams out there," he said.
Because dogs are given a reward if they "alert" for a bedbug, for example, they may alert just to get the food. An unscrupulous or inexperienced handler could easily use the false alarms to charge for unnecessary treatments.
"You can waste a lot of money very quickly," Alpert said. "Some handlers have no idea what a bedbug looks like."
At Bed Bug Solutions Inc. in Des Plaines, Ill., Linda DeVelasco has filled her calendar with appointments for Scooby, her beagle mutt. To avoid a conflict of interest, she sells Scooby's services independently of local exterminators who actually kill the bugs.
"Otherwise I would find bugs every place I go into," she said.
No one knows why bedbugs are back. Scientists theorize that the wingless insects hitched a ride on visitors or cargo from abroad, or that they resist pesticide better than their forebears, or even that a new, super-strong strain of household pests has evolved.
What's clear is they are hard to eradicate. Bedbugs may survive a year without feeding, and unlike termites and other insects that cluster in colonies, they can create havoc in small numbers. A single female may lay enough eggs to infest an apartment -- and then crawl 100 feet a day to bite neighbors down the hall.
In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency convened the first National Bed Bug Summit in April. The two-day conference brought together the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pentagon, state and federal housing officials, experts and exterminators to help fight the invasion.
"A year ago, I thought bedbugs were a thing from a couple of centuries ago or maybe in a children's nursery rhyme," New Jersey state Assemblywoman Joan Quigley told the summit. "I had no idea they were a modern scourge."
Quigley successfully sponsored a bill in the New Jersey Assembly, apparently the nation's first, that would require landlords to pay for bedbug eradication in most cases or face a fine. The state Senate has not yet taken up the measure.
On a recent sunny morning at Laurel House in Asbury Park, a once-grand seaside resort, Sara went room to room in a former boarding house now used to house 28 homeless people a block or so from the boardwalk.
"I've done public housing for 20 years and never heard of bedbugs until four years ago," Steve Heisman, who heads the social service agency that runs the facility, said as he followed Sara. "Now they're public enemy No. 1."
Heisman requires residents to remove pictures from their walls and to keep their clothes and clutter to a minimum to eliminate places where bugs can hide. But he still calls exterminators back "three times a year, and that's if I'm lucky," for $10,000 treatments.
That afternoon, Sara was about 50 miles north in a working-class neighborhood of Jersey City. Wilbert took her to see whether bedbugs had returned to a recently treated three-story apartment building. Out back, someone had painted "Bedbug!" in red on a discarded mattress and crib.
"We had to throw everything out," said Saroj Bala, one of the tenants. "It was an utter nightmare. I was being bitten every night.
"She anxiously watched as Sara sniffed through her living room and bedroom. Bala smiled with relief when the dog left without finding any new bugs.
"Wonderful," she said.
bob.drogin@latimes.com
The Los Angeles Times
(This artice isn't local but a very good synopsis of Bed bugs and Bed bug dogs)
There's high demand for dogs trained to track down the tiny, bloodsucking parasites that have invaded cities in the last four years.
"It can be a very valuable tool," said Richard Cooper, coauthor of the 266-page "Bed Bug Handbook" and a member of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new Bed Bug Advisory Board. "You can work your way through a hotel or a college dorm or a movie theater much more quickly with dogs than just relying on a visual inspection."
But Gary Alpert, an entomologist at Harvard University who specializes in bedbugs, cautions that some pest control companies use dogs as a gimmick to exploit people's fears and to charge more money.
"There are a lot of scams out there," he said.
Because dogs are given a reward if they "alert" for a bedbug, for example, they may alert just to get the food. An unscrupulous or inexperienced handler could easily use the false alarms to charge for unnecessary treatments.
"You can waste a lot of money very quickly," Alpert said. "Some handlers have no idea what a bedbug looks like."
At Bed Bug Solutions Inc. in Des Plaines, Ill., Linda DeVelasco has filled her calendar with appointments for Scooby, her beagle mutt. To avoid a conflict of interest, she sells Scooby's services independently of local exterminators who actually kill the bugs.
"Otherwise I would find bugs every place I go into," she said.
No one knows why bedbugs are back. Scientists theorize that the wingless insects hitched a ride on visitors or cargo from abroad, or that they resist pesticide better than their forebears, or even that a new, super-strong strain of household pests has evolved.
What's clear is they are hard to eradicate. Bedbugs may survive a year without feeding, and unlike termites and other insects that cluster in colonies, they can create havoc in small numbers. A single female may lay enough eggs to infest an apartment -- and then crawl 100 feet a day to bite neighbors down the hall.
In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency convened the first National Bed Bug Summit in April. The two-day conference brought together the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pentagon, state and federal housing officials, experts and exterminators to help fight the invasion.
"A year ago, I thought bedbugs were a thing from a couple of centuries ago or maybe in a children's nursery rhyme," New Jersey state Assemblywoman Joan Quigley told the summit. "I had no idea they were a modern scourge."
Quigley successfully sponsored a bill in the New Jersey Assembly, apparently the nation's first, that would require landlords to pay for bedbug eradication in most cases or face a fine. The state Senate has not yet taken up the measure.
On a recent sunny morning at Laurel House in Asbury Park, a once-grand seaside resort, Sara went room to room in a former boarding house now used to house 28 homeless people a block or so from the boardwalk.
"I've done public housing for 20 years and never heard of bedbugs until four years ago," Steve Heisman, who heads the social service agency that runs the facility, said as he followed Sara. "Now they're public enemy No. 1."
Heisman requires residents to remove pictures from their walls and to keep their clothes and clutter to a minimum to eliminate places where bugs can hide. But he still calls exterminators back "three times a year, and that's if I'm lucky," for $10,000 treatments.
That afternoon, Sara was about 50 miles north in a working-class neighborhood of Jersey City. Wilbert took her to see whether bedbugs had returned to a recently treated three-story apartment building. Out back, someone had painted "Bedbug!" in red on a discarded mattress and crib.
"We had to throw everything out," said Saroj Bala, one of the tenants. "It was an utter nightmare. I was being bitten every night.
"She anxiously watched as Sara sniffed through her living room and bedroom. Bala smiled with relief when the dog left without finding any new bugs.
"Wonderful," she said.
bob.drogin@latimes.com
The Los Angeles Times
