Found this interesting story of how dogs are now trained by canine units to not only detect drugs, theft and other crimes…they can also sniff bed bugs!

Donna Coberly of Tampa trains dogs to detect the next generation of parasitic pests. Her top performer is Cinch, a Jack Russell mix with a great nose for nests of bedbugs. Coberly plants vials of live bedbugs, then rewards her dogs when they sit down, signaling detection of the scent.

“We teach them to equate food with the bedbug smell,” Coberly said.

Her company, Excelsis Detections, has grown from one or two jobs a month two years ago to daily calls. “It’s been a very busy year,” she says.One sunny day in early November, she loaded up her dogs and headed to a job at an apartment near the University of South Florida. Four students feared an infestation because of persistent small bites on their arms.

Cinch’s job was, well, a cinch.

This is a great idea for keeping mattress free of those pest!

You can read more of it here.