Q&A Special Report
Sniffing Out Bedbugs
by Elaine Cappellino

“Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

I have heard this saying since I was little and always thought it was kind of goofy and cute. After all, they don’t make bedbugs anymore, do they?

In the last few years, bedbugs have made a comeback. Southern Hospitality Magazine spoke with Hank Nolin, owner of Sun State Specialty K-9s Inc. Hank and his partner, Bill Whitstine of The Florida K-9 Academy, train dogs to be used in hotels to detect bedbugs. Dogs long have been used in law enforcement and security to detect drugs and bombs. Recently, dogs have been put to work in hotels sniffing out some unwanted guests.

Southern Hospitality Magazine: How did the idea to use dogs for bedbug detection come about?

Hank Nolin: There is the legend, and then there is the truth. A large hotel chain had a guest come in. The woman came down in the morning and had spots on her. They didn’t know whether it was allergies or what was going on. This was about six years ago. They changed her linens, rewashed all of her clothing and she went back to the same room with her family. The next morning she came down, and the spots had grown immensely and in number as well. They found out it was a bedbug infestation in the room. The woman took them to court to sue for damages. The defense attorney approached my partner about training dogs to find bedbugs, and that is how it started. We are the original bedbug dog developer.

There are two sides to our company. The Florida K-9 Academy is my partner, Bill Whitstine’s training office. He is the gentleman who really started the bedbug program. Sun K-9 is the working end of it. Bill does the training and sells the dogs to different pest control companies, and I am the one who does the work with the dogs in the field.

SHM: Are pest control companies purchasing their own dogs, or do they contract out?

HN: It’s running about half and half right now. The dogs that we do sell are going to pest control companies. We are getting calls from hotels individually that are looking to have the dogs come in and do a regular inspection of the property to ensure that there are not any bedbugs.

SHM: Are the dogs used more for initial detection on a regular basis or after treatment as a follow-up procedure?

HN: Most of the work we are doing is proactive. The thing that people need to know is that bedbugs do not come because hotels are dirty. It has nothing to do with cleanliness or class. Bedbugs are an international problem because they are migrating. It goes back to the 1960s when the World Health Organization outlawed the use of DDT. They have been coming back slowly, and in the past five years, they have been proliferating.

The psychological impact is huge. We give hoteliers classes on detecting bedbugs. We begin with the executive staff, and then we train the housekeeping departments. Many times the housekeeping staff will say, “Oh I have seen those in the rooms.” As you educate the staff, you see that they need to be trained because they didn’t know what to look for.

Bedbugs are the best hitchhikers in the world. They don’t need to travel on your skin. They can travel on your clothing. They can travel on your carry-on bag and your luggage. It is a little bit difficult when you are doing an inspection in an occupied room and your dog alerts on the guest’s luggage. This really presents a problem for the hotel management. Do you go in and say, “Excuse me, but in our routine inspection we found bedbugs on your luggage?” I recommend to the hotels that yes, you do that, but you extend the offer to take all of their possessions out for dry cleaning because the dry cleaning chemicals will kill all the bedbugs. But at the same time, they strip the room and treat it as well.

Hotels have to be proactive, and it does cost. But for the dog to find the bedbugs before there is a problem, it saves the hotels in the long run.

SHM: Are there any new products or technologies that will treat bed bugs without the harmful effects?

HN: There are companies coming out with supposedly green products. What we are finding is whatever product is used that does work must be used multiple times because of the life cycle of the bedbug. It starts with the egg being implanted in the adult female. She hatches the eggs, and they grow into nymphs and then adults. That life cycle takes about 15 to 21 days. In that timeframe, if a hotel treats on the first of the month and that adult female lays the eggs before she dies, those babies then hatch 5 to 10 days later, so there is a new lifecycle that you have to treat for. That is why we recommend that they treat at least two times, if not a third time, to ensure that all of the bugs are dead.

The newer technology is to heat or steam the area. They raise the temperature of the hotel room to a little bit above 135 degrees, and it kills the bedbugs. Whether they are eggs, nymphs or adults, it kills at every stage of the lifecycle. It is a bit more expensive because the companies have these ceramic heaters that they put into the room. They seal all the windows and doors and gradually heat the room over a four-hour period. They keep the raised temperature for about an hour and then gradually let the temperature go down.

SHM: Has the trend toward green or sustainable products increased the use of dogs as a way to avoid the pesticides?

HN: The dog is not being used as the green program to treat bedbugs. The dog is an investigative tool that we use. It will take a human anywhere from an hour to two hours to inspect a typical hotel room. A trained dog can inspect that room in four to five minutes. Different studies have found the dogs to have a 90 to 97 percent accuracy rate. Humans are expected to be about 40 to 50 percent accurate because finding these little microdots of eggs that will eventually hatch is very difficult. The dogs can also find bedbugs and eggs in the walls and furniture.

SHM: How many hotels are actively using dogs for bed bug detection?

HN: I can’t give a complete number industrywide, but our company has put out over 110 bedbug detection dogs. In order for our clients, who are mostly pest control companies, to make it worth their while, they have to be doing at least three to four hotels. So I would say a conservative estimate is somewhere around 600 to 700 hotels. Our company is doing about a dozen hotel inspections. About 25 percent of the dog owners are not pest control companies. They are doing it as an inspection business. It depends on the state rules and regulations. But about 75 percent of the dogs are going directly to pest control companies. We have even delivered dogs to Japan, Canada, Sweden and Germany.

SHM: What types of dogs do you use?

HN: We use Labradors mostly for the other inspections our company does, like bomb detection and drug detection. For the bedbug detection, we are using smaller breed dogs or smaller Labradors. Mostly it is because of having to handle the dogs. If we are inspecting a cruise ship, I don’t want to have to pick up an 80-pound Labrador to reach the top bunk. We use Jack Russell terriers and border collies and other smaller breeds that are easier to handle.

SHM: Can any dog be trained to detect bedbugs?

HN: We have a culling out system or a test program. We look for a dog’s abilities on retrieve drive and hunt drive. Retrieve drive is looking to see if the dog retrieves a toy and brings it back. Then we see how long he will do it; how long will the dog play. That gives us an idea if the dog is a couch potato or a working dog. On what we call hunt drive, we take the dog out to a nice field of tall grass. We will play with the dog for a while and then take the toy and throw it out into the tall grass to see how long the dog will hunt for the toy. If the dog says, “Well, you threw it out there; why don’t you go get it?” then we don’t want the dog. Another way we test is to take the toy the dog has been playing with and put it under a five-gallon bucket right in front of the dog. We see if he will go after the toy. Will he scratch after it, will he bark, will he show some interest? Basically, we want to see the dog say, “I know the toy is there, and I really want it.” Those are a few simple tests we do.

SHM: Where do you get your dogs?

HN: I live on a four-acre piece of property with anywhere from 10 to 12 dogs at a time. Our company houses and trains dogs for bomb detection, drug detection, mold detection and bedbug detection. We do a lot of adoptions from the local shelter. We save a lot of dogs off death row and put them to work.

The bedbug program came out of necessity and was the result of a challenge. In other words, can you train a dog to do this? We have dogs that are working for the Agriculture Department and working on finding the sea turtle eggs on the beaches. We are training dogs to find foods that have any type of peanut product in it for people with severe peanut allergies. Now some people will say, “How do you train the dog not to eat the food?” Well, it’s not easy. But if you have a child who is deathly allergic to peanuts, you can take the dog into a restaurant. When the food comes to the table, you can put it in front of the dog, and it can be a filet mignon or a casserole, but if the dog alerts on it, you can be very, very sure there is something with peanuts. Right now, Bill is training these dogs and donating them to a foundation for families in need.

We don’t think we have found even half of what these dogs are capable of.

Author’s note: Hank Nolin has written a book called Peter the Drug Dog. Nolin donates a portion of his proceeds to Vets Helping Today’s Returning Heroes Inc. Its mission is to help those who have served our country honorably to live with dignity and independence, whether they are visually impaired or have other special needs, by using guide dogs or other service dogs to attain that goal. Please check them out at www.vetshelpingheroes.org.