Trusty pooch sniffs out nasty bed bugs
With dog’s help, store is making a difference
Anew charity thrift store put couches, tables and chairs in more than 1,600 apartments for the homeless last year, accomplished with the help of small, but essential helper — a five-year-old dog with a nose for bed bugs.
Most thrift stores have stopped carrying soft furniture like armchairs after a surge in bed bugs hit Edmonton five years ago. That eliminated a source of inexpensive furniture for students and new immigrants, and also posed a big challenge for non-profits partnering with the city to end homelessness.
“Some people have not had new apartments for a long time. We were housing quite a few people and really needed a volume of furniture,” said Susan Mcgee, executive director for Homeward Trust, which runs the thrift store Find. Furnishing Hope on 122 Street and 51 Avenue.
But the fear of bed bugs is a big barrier. That’s where Oscar comes in. The dog is eager to please, will work for food, and graduated from the Florida Canine Academy four years ago, trained to sniff out bed bugs. He visits the large warehouse every two weeks to make sure staff haven’t missed any telltale signs on the incoming furniture.
Staff have found bed bugs on truckloads of furniture before it gets to the warehouse, but no bed bug has slipped past them. Oscar gives them the safety net so they have confidence their efforts are working.
He sniffs across all the cracks in the sofas, first finding the well-sealed test vials of live bugs his handler hides among the cushions. Then he checks the rest of the new stock.
Bed bugs weren’t an issue six years ago, said Christopher Day, Oscar’s handler and a technician with Orkin PCO, a pest control company that also works in hotels, apartments and condos.
Day got Oscar four years ago when bed bug complaints were rising. Now there’s enough work to keep more than a dozen bed bug sniffing dogs busy in the Edmonton region.
“Bed bugs can hide in a crack the (width) of a credit card, a human inspection, using our eyes, is hit and miss,” said Day, describing why Oscar is important.
“With the dog, he’s not actually looking for them. He’s using their pheromones signatures, their scent, to find them. And their scent is left behind even when they are just walking across the surface.”
With Oscar’s help, the store is making a difference for its clients.
“Having new furniture, they’re just excited to come in and see what we’ve got,” Mcgee said.
“We’ve been really supporting a lot of people moving from the street into housing, and, being able to support them with as much choice as possible along the way, we can do that at Find a lot cheaper than if we were to try to buy new furniture retail.”
The thrift store started about three years ago in Murray Soroka’s garage. The head of the Jasper Place Health and Wellness Centre had started a fledgling Housing First program, and tried to stockpile furniture.
He would call Charles Guick to help him load the truck. Guick now fixes dressers and manages the shop at the back of Find. Furnishing Hope.
Eventually, they had so much stockpiled, they rented two storage units, then six storage units. That’s when Homeward Trust got involved. It found a warehouse and helped create the retail outlet with partnerships with other nonprofits in the city. It means a lot to have a furnished house, said Guick, who used to sport a ponytail down to his waist when he lived on the street for 22 years, but moved into his first apartment with Soroka’s help. “I went from homelessness to having a condo, to having a wife, two dogs and a bird,” Guick said. “It was the first time I never got judged for whatever I did. That was the greatest gift from him.”
They sell to the general public on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. “It’s really launching into a real community asset,” Mcgee said. “All of the furniture that’s in here would otherwise have been in a landfill.”