David Bessason has been training dogs to sniff out drugs and explosives for over thirty years, but he’s recently turned his dogs’ noses to a new foe – bed bugs.

“It’s an epidemic right now, I guess you could say, the bed bugs. A lot of it is peace of mind,” Bessason says at a training session for his fourteen-month-old rescue Rocky.

Bessason says he hopes to alleviate the emotional and psychological toll that bed bug infestations can cause, including lack of sleep, increased anxiety, and feelings of isolation and loneliness. Some people have even reported symptoms of PTSD following consecutive infestations.

Bessason trains dogs with Val Arpin, a pioneer of bed bug detection in Winnipeg. Arpin owns Patches, who was the first ever Bed bug sniffing dog in the city. Together, Arpin and Patches travel Manitoba sniffing out bed bugs in homes, apartment buildings, and businesses like MCC Thrift Shop.

Arpin says she and Patches have seen some pretty horrifying infestations.

“[We were] in an apartment block that was notorious for bed bugs in the walls, just notorious. And I walked in with her and the couch literally looked like rush hour traffic of bed bugs,” she says.

Bessason and Arpin hope that their combined expertise in bed bug detection and search dog training will raise the quality and accuracy of bed bug detection in Manitoba.

However, search dogs aren’t the only way to find the bugs. Winnipeg’s ‘bug boss’ Taz Stuart says to keep an eye out for the telltale blood stains, musty odour and tiny red bites that’ll appear on your skin.

Stuart stresses that if you do find anything, don’t just toss the infested material away. Instead, collect a sample and call a professional exterminator ASAP – you’ll stand a much greater chance of completely banishing the bugs.