Hello, I am eagerly awaiting my puppy's arrival from the breeder next week. She is a black lab about five or six months old and will be training as a bed bug detection dog. I'm up in the air on names right now, but I'm thinking 'Shade'. She will be my first labrador; my previous experience has been with my german shepherd in bitesports and various other activities. His puppyhood teething was... fun, to say the least, and I'm hoping a labrador will involve less of an investment in bandaids. Does anyone else here have experience with bed bug detection or raising detection dogs?
Hi @TJ Shepherd - welcome to the site and I bet you're all very excited about the new arrival. I don't have anything helpful to say in answer to your question, but I am fascinated in the idea of a bed bug detection dog. Where is the application for this and how do you go about training it?
Hotels and private residents hire dogs to detect bed bugs as a precursor to treating the home, or after treatment to verify that there are no more live bugs. Bed bug infestations are very expensive to treat, so having a dog come in helps cut that cost. The dogs are taught only to find live bugs and to ignore dead bugs. Training it involves building an association between the odor of the live bugs and the dog's favorite toy. Basically, the only time the dog gets his toy is when he finds live bugs, so he is VERY interested in finding the bugs. Very similar to the training that police dogs go through for narcotics and explosives.
That's amazing. I had no idea that was even a thing. Hope you find someone on here who can help with their experience. Now I can't stop thinking about bed bugs!
I have done a module on scent detection as part of a dog behaviour and training course. I taught my black Lab, called Shadow, to sit when she detected the scent of Early Grey tea. It took just under 2 months from the initial training to proofing the task in high-distraction environments. I taught an owner to teach her black Lab to actively indicate when the target odour was detected. What training did the breeder carry out? You are getting her at a very late point in her first year. Do you have a specific question?
This sounds brilliant - I might look into this as Luna would enjoy it. We're just using a clove scented ball at the moment. I love seeing how proud of herself Luna is when she's found the thing she's looking for. Also good to know that the world's supply of Earl Grey tea is safe in the hands of Shadow
I would think that there are going to be quite a few contradictions that you will want to avoid. Ususally puppies are discouraged from jumping on beds, sofas etc to protect their joints (as well as some people not liking the muddy dog on sofa look!). As you won't want to discourage her from jumping on furniture, you amy have to manage this in other ways. PS, If you think lab pups are less bitey than GSDs you are sadly wrong Hopefully, if she's 5/6 months, she'll be over this phase now though
@LoopyLuna We were required to have 6 boxes. A different scent in each. In the test an assistant puts out the boxes while we sat with our backs to the machinations. I had no idea in which box the Earl Grey was located. I had to get 5 out of 6 runs correct to pass the test. I had to rely on her to sit at the appropriate box. She was the leader, which a very odd feeling because we humans normally assume the role of leader. It's marvellous to see the dog at work. Shadow was 100 percent accurate, despite the assistant mixing up the boxes after each run. Sniffing is very relaxing for the dog. And since it is a multiple choice test, she remained on continuous reinforcement--one never transitions to intermittent reinforcement. Scent work is a terrific exercise. Very popular here in Tasmania. But. My sense is that it's generally poorly taught and delivered. Recently I watched a demonstration in which the target scent box had been kept with the non-target scent boxes. So one has to learn how to stop cross contamination. And more importantly, not give any inadvertent clues about where the target scent is located when one is teaching the dog. One has to motivate the dog to search all boxes even though the first box may have been the one in which the target scent was located. There are tricks used in the teaching to motivate the dog even though the continuing search will prove unsuccessful, at least in test--only one box is allowed to contain the target scent during the test. I had initially been worried that she would heel and sit when I stopped moving. She is trained to novice level obedience, and therefore has an automatic sit. So i kept on moving until she sat and when teaching scent work I used a 5 metre long line and a harness to differentiate the exercise from heeling. My worry proved to be entirely baseless. She is able to differentiate between heeling and scent work, though I must admit she will not walk on my right-hand side under any circumstance. We both loved the exercise. I can highly recommend it.
Totally agree. That is why I asked what training the breeder had undertaken. I think it's possible to train scent detection without the dog jumping all over the bed. One can lift the dog up and down. Get the dog used to wearing shoes. What I would be worried about is bringing live bed bugs into my home while I'm doing the training. How does one safely contain them? I'm not sure I really want to know.
For a detection dog you do want to encourage jumping and climbing on a variety of surfaces. As long as you don't over do it and they aren't jumping from high surfaces, to worry about the joint issues. My dogs are also kept on a variety of joint supplements as a precaution regardless. I would also.make sure my dog was bathed before bringing it into someone else's home. No muddy paws allowed. As for what training the breeder carried out, I know she has been over agility obstacles, various surfaces (I'm getting her specifically because the male I was going to get had a negative reaction to metal stairs), exposure to a lot of places, and has done a lot of retrieval work and is fed through food puzzles. To my knowledge she hasn't had any other training. Bed bugs are stored in little vials with a mesh screen on them, and then from there can be stored in a container of your choice. However they do need to be fed
Really interesting @tjshepherd. Many thanks for the explanation. What do you feed them? How do you keep them alive? Do you pick out the dead ones to act as non-target odour. I take it that the mesh means no escapees but allows the dog to detect the bugs. As you are probably aware some police forces put boots on the detector dogs. In doing so motorists can't voice disapproval of the dog potentially scratching their leather sits.
