Greenies, Buddhas and Bed Bugs

I did six hours of #bedbug inspections on Sunday, and Roscoe (my #coonhound) found two infestations. I got a good feel for his endurance, and got some good experience doing visual inspections. But he did the darnedest thing on our last search.

We were going through a vacation house that had been uninhabited for about six months. And he hit on a pile of clothing that had been left on the floor in a closet. He pointed hard, and then looked at me with that look that says: "Dad, I am dead serious, there are bugs RIGHT THERE!"

I pulled out my flashlight and carefully started going through the clothing. No bed bugs. But when I got to the bottom of the pile, I found the culprit: A GREENIE! WHAT?!?

Now, Roscoe has been trained to ignore distractions when he is searching. He will search past cat food, litter boxes, and all sorts of things. But this Greenie really got his goat. Later, in the same house, he hit again behind a dresser. Somehow I knew what I was going to find. Yep, another Greenie. So, needless to say, today we are doing some Greenie-specific re-training.

When training search dogs, we try to expose them to everything they are likely to encounter in a search environment. In my efforts to train Roscoe to find bed bugs, apparently I forgot to expose him to something --- a Buddha statue. Silly me.

While searching a temple in the mountains, Roscoe suddenly looked up and saw the giant Buddha statue and locked up! The hair on his back stood up, and he growled and backed away slowly.

The folks who were accompanying me on my search, temple regulars, thought that was the funniest thing they ever saw. It took about five minutes to convince Roscoe that the statue was the bearer of little pieces of hot dog, and then we continued our search. Good times.