How Does the K9 Inspection Service Work?

Once our office schedules your appointment, they will direct you to our website to download a prep sheet that prompts you to get ready for the K9 inspection. This is a vital part of a successful inspection process. Preparation keeps the handler and K9 safe and keeps the K9 focused during the inspection process, resulting in a superior inspection for our customers. Key parts of the inspection will require keeping your pets away from the house or building and putting away pet food, so our K9 does not get distracted.

Once Kristen arrives with one of our K9’s, she will do a quick inspection to ensure the prep sheet was completed for the best inspection results. Then, she will put a couple of “hides” within the inspection area. Hides are small vials with live bed bugs in them that have a screened top to allow the smell/pheromone to permeate the area. These “hides” are a control to ensure the K9 is working properly, and they keep both the handler and K9 honest. Consider “hides” as a control from a science class experiment where the control part of the experiments is your baseline when assessing a hypothesis. In this case we are assessing whether you (the customer) have live bed bugs and we are using the “hides” (or control) to ensure that our inspection process is working accurately. Please note that the “hides” are securely encased and bed bugs will not leak out of the vials.

Once the “hides” are placed, Kristen will take one of our K9’s through the home or business to identify whether you have live bed bugs or no live bed bugs. It is important to note that the K9 will only alert on LIVE bed bugs. At the end of the inspection, Kristen will walk you through what she did or did not find. In the event NO BED BUGS were found, she will give you a clearance letter. If bed bugs were found, you can then make an informed decision to hire a pest control company to manage the treatment of the bed bug activity. If you want to use our company (Northern Colorado Pest and Wildlife Control), we would be happy to assist you.

We recommend using Aprehend for bed bug treatments, which is a new bio-pesticide. Aprehend is a game changer for the treatment of bed bugs. It is a naturally occurring fungus that comes from the soil and scientists found that is devastating to bed bugs. Northern Colorado Pest & Wildlife have used Aprehend exclusively for the past year with phenomenal results. Other treatment options include heat treatments, but they come with the risk of damaging the house or the furnishings inside and typically the heat treatments are paired with a chemical treatment of some kind. Northern Colorado Pest & Wildlife no longer performs heat treatments with the development of Aprehend.  Heat treatments are no longer necessary (in our opinion).

Make sure to ask about our K9 Bed Bug Package too! The package includes the K9 inspection, treatment with Aprehend, and then a follow-up K9 inspection with a clearance letter.