Cute Dogs Might Not Be Bedbug-Finding Geniuses After All

Apollo, the bedbug beagle!

Uh-oh: Apparently man's best friend might not be the best arbiter of whether your apartment has bedbugs, even though he (or she) is so cute with those puppy eyes and wagging tail. According to the NY Times, "As the number of reported infestations rises and the demand for the dogs soars, complaints from people who say dogs have falsely alerted to bedbugs are also climbing."

The Times offers from tales from apparent "false-positive" bedbug incidents, including incidents in Union Square and Upper West Side, but an interesting one is from Windsor Terrace:

Jessica Silver and her husband paid $3,500 in extermination fees after a dog indicated there were bedbugs throughout their rowhouse in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. They got rid of 40 garbage bags full of clothes and baby toys that they feared were infested and their Pottery Barn queen-size bed. But Mrs. Silver continued to get bitten, and she called another exterminator, John Furman of Boot-a-Pest, based on Long Island, who spent two hours combing through her bedroom where the biting was taking place, only to find no traces of bedbugs, alive or dead.

The culprits, she eventually discovered, were rodent mites. Mr. Furman said the antibedbug treatment probably killed some mites but failed to eradicate their breeding grounds in Mrs. Silver’s walls.

So, where are the rodent mite-finding dogs? Anyway, Silver, who wouldn't name the company (there was a whole kerfuffle about a post she made on an online bedbug forum), also said, "Everyone’s getting sucked into the whole bedbug pandemonium." You don't say?!

There's also debate about when to feed bedbug-detecting dogs.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on November 11, 2010 6:02 PM

Comments [rss]

1stephanie

The city really needs to start talking about this. They have no trouble having a campaign where they show the fat content of food for the obese people, but have remained mute on something that could someday affect a larger percentage of NYC citizens.

People are being swindled because the facts aren't out there. Every time I see the ad for the mattress covers they sell at Duane Reade, (something like "Bedbug Be-gone" or something), I think how much money people are spending on things that do not work. At all. No mattress cover is going to change your bedbug situation, and those sprays? Sorry, dudes.

Cannibal

awww, but there still cute doggywogs arent they? arent they? Yes they are!

TheKlaus

"Might Not BE"

You forgot the BE!

Revise the title quick!

non_sequitur

Slightly unfaithful headline for the article you're lifting from the Times.

The headline implies that there is something inherent in dogs that makes them unable to detect bed bugs. The reality is that dogs that are poorly trained cannot detect the bugs and even those that are trained make mistakes from time to time.

With the understanding that that headline won't generate a lot of clicks, it still is misrepresentative.

Dogsbody

I have a problem with the headline too, but slightly different to both you and jaycjay:

The headline suggests (to me, at least), that the dogs are not capable of finding bedbugs (or at least, are not "geniuses" in this field).

But the body of the story seems to say that the problem is not that they cannot detect bedbugs, but that they find bedbugs and other bugs, but with no ability to distinguish between the two.

So in truth, the dogs are bedbug-finding geniuses, but they are also rodentbug-finding geniuses too.

Dogsbody

Furthermore, another possibility is that the dog digs and paws at random, and just happened to get lucky in detecting both the bedbugs and rodentbugs on certain occasions, in which case he is no genius at all.

jaycjay

Or, the headline could be taken as meaning that there's something inherent in cute dogs that makes them unable to detect bed bugs, implying that ugly dogs are better suited for the task.

SP's Ghost

Dogs have to be trained to do this kind of thing. Fucking morans.

jaycjay

Yep, and just because some exterminator brings in a dog doesn't prove that dog actually has been trained to detect bed bugs. Actually, it'd be easier just to teach them to "alert" on some command, and get a customer every time.

EastRiver

A properly trained dog can be mishandled. Dogs will false alert to get a reward but a good handler can tell the difference.

jaycjay

Yeah, no doubt. Kind of the same point, though: how many of these pest control guys with the supposed bedbug sniffing dogs are actually qualified dog handlers?