A Lab’s Life

The headline isn’t that unusual; it’s a matter of fact that many dog breeds are great at flushing out game, so why not pests?

This story caught my eye because A.J.’s dog neighbor is a Jack Russell who just had a litter of five males. They’re five weeks old and great little dogs–not one runt in the litter. All but one of them are spoken for, so as of tonight there’s one left if anyone in the MA area is interested in a pure Jack pup. I believe the going price is $850. They have rounder (rather than the pointy) faces, like the pups in this picture:

Anyhow, the Jack’s mom is a security manager for Mass General Hospital. She just attended an industry conference where the owner of a well-known security company, after hearing she had a litter of new Jacks, approached her and asked to buy two of them on the spot. He said, as this story details, that he uses the dogs for ridding hotels of bedbugs!

Apparently the U.S. had a big problem with bedbugs not so long ago. After years of paying attention to the problem it had gone away. More recently the critters have come back and are becoming an issue again for hotels in NYC.

Luckily A.J. only brings the odd tick into the house, and they’re easy to spot against his fur.