With a sense of smell a thousand times more powerful than any human's, dogs are excellent at finding things. With a sense of smell a thousand times more powerful than any human's, dogs are excellent at finding things. This skill has been utilized by police forces and immigration officers to identify drugs, bombs and weapons. Search-and-rescue dogs can find buried people in rubble. Now, dogs can even be used to help find bed bugs.

Bed bugs are a major nuisance and they can be notoriously difficult to eradicate. These bugs are paper-thin and live in cracks and crevices of homes. They feed on human blood and often infest beds at hotels, apartments, homeless shelters and even hospitals. Because they're so small and reclusive, they can be hard to see.

Normal methods of bed bug detection can be very time and labor intensive, requiring many man hours to complete. A bed bug dog is able to complete the task much more quickly and accurately by sniffing out the offending bugs. Whereas a human inspector may need to strip a building bare or even destroy walls in order to locate an infestation, a dog is able to identify problem areas without these limitations. The dog can smell bugs that are inside of the walls, under carpets and in other hard-to-reach places.

A bed bug dog has 90 percent accuracy, compared to a human inspector's 30 percent accuracy. Because the dog can fit into small spaces and accurately identify hot spots, an extermination service is able to destroy the infestation before it gets out of hand. This saves both time and money as well as the peace of mind of the home's residents.

All bed bug dogs go through up to 1,000 hours of rigorous training. The training methods are similar to those used by dog trainers for bomb or drug dogs. The bed bug dog is taught the scent of the bug and rewarded when he finds one. Once at work, the dog will alert his handler any time a bug is scented.

Not all pest control companies utilize bug-sniffing dogs, but it's becoming more popular in the industry. If you're looking for an accurate and effective way to identify the problem areas in your house, see about hiring Purity Pest Control, a company that uses specially trained bed bug dogs.