The latest secret weapon in the war against bedbugs

LAKE LOUISE, AB—Oscar the Orkin bedbug dog was a huge hit at the AHLA Annual Convention held in Lake Louise last month. He might look like your average energetic lab cross, but Oscar has been specially trained by Dave Labelle to seek out bedbugs, then sit down and point to the affected area with his nose. He is part of a pilot project based in Orkin Canada’s Edmonton office to explore the feasibility of using man’s best friend for early bedbug detection

Currently, inspections are visual, but if they are inside a couch or behind a wall, it’s hard to verify the presence of bedbugs without damaging the structure. Dogs can verify the presence of bedbugs in such locations. Dogs are 90 to 95 per cent accurate in identifying bedbugs, compared to 40 to 45 per cent with the visual inspection, says Orkin’s Edmonton branch manager Doug Wadlow. This approach is less expensive because it enables operators to identify issues before they get out of hand.

Oscar takes just three to five minutes to search a room—he can cover 15 rooms per hour. He has been specially trained by Labelle, who has also worked with elephants, carpenter ants, monkeys and lions.

If the project works in Edmonton, Orkin could roll it out across Canada, starting with Vancouver.

Another bedbug solution

In related news, Protect-A-Bed of Chicago has come up with the Allerzip bedding encasement system with a three-sided ‘Bug Lock’ zipper system. Allerzip protects the sleeper from the mattress and the mattress from the sleeper. Unlike a regular sheet, bedbugs cannot feed through the fabric or escape from it. Trapped inside the encasement, these bugs eventually starve and die, while guests remain protected from aching, itchy bites, and hotels are protected from nasty blogs, websites and lawsuits. Richard Cooper, technical director for Cooper Pest Solutions based in New Jersey, has been working closely with Protect-A-Bed in the creation of Allerzip.

Caber Distributors of Markham, ON are the exclusive Canadian distributors of Allerzip.