Meet Basil Brush and Charlie Brown, Merlin's bed bug detection dogs. Our two bed bug sniffer dogs are seeking out the pests across the UK where rapid and regular bed bug detection is required such as hotels, guest houses and even aircraft.
Any pest controller who has had to check just one bedroom for bedbugs will know that to undertake this thoroughly can take anything up to 30 minutes per room. So with approaching 100 rooms to do, you don't need to be a mathematical wizard to work out how long it would take to complete this task. And with what degree of accuracy and at what cost to the client? This is where the detection dogs enter the equation.
Our bed bug detection dogs can detect bugs within minutes, sometimes even seconds of entering a room and so the time saved, and therefore cost-saving to the client is tremendous. With cost as little as just a few pounds per room the savings can be tremendous, not only in saved detection costs, but in keeping rooms in action 365 days a year and maintaining reputation.
Dog training
Training a dog to this level takes months, even years. Once fully operational, each dog has to undergo daily maintenance training with their handler, plus refresher training with their main trainer (in Charlie and Basil’s case an ex-military dog trainer) every two or three days, or certainly every week.
Detector dogs work in pairs – one working and one resting in shifts of anything from 30 minutes to an hour.
Who the Dogs can help
Whilst the detector dogs are used in any bedbug contracts we also undertake this detection work at locations where we do not do the actual pest control. In this way we are completely impartial.
Contracts for the dogs’ services come in two ways – either as a monitoring contract engaged directly by the hotel, hostel, airline or whatever, or employed by the pest control contractor to act as their monitoring service for their contracts with their client. So, any pest control company can benefit from the services of these dogs.
Find out more
To find out more about the ability of Meet Basil Brush and Charlie Brown to sniff out bed bugs in hotels rooms, aircraft and many other commercial premises, saving clients thousands of pounds, call Adam on 0800 037 7332.
