When Paul Hewitt wants to check whether mold exists in a home or building, he brings along his two-year old beagle, Kody.
That's important because Kody does the work.
When Hewitt says "show me," she sniffs out the mold by pointing her nose at the spot and sits patiently at the spot, nodding her head up and down, until the spot is marked.
But Kody isn't done. She checks out other walls in the house to determine if mold is behind them, said Hewitt, whose firm, K9 Mold Service is the only dog mold detection service in the region.
"When Susan Weis, the company president, and I decided to get into the mold detection business, we decided to use the dog program originated by Bill Whitstine of Florida," Hewitt said.
Whitstine's K9 company, Florida Canine Academy, trains the dogs -- which he obtains from animal shelters -- up to 1,000 hours on detecting 18 different types of mold and adds another 40 hours to train the handler (Hewitt) with the dog.
Once the dog-handler team passes the final tests, both are certified.
The cost for the dog and training is about $10,000, Hewitt said.
To date, Kody has only been involved in several private house inspections and several demonstrations since Hewitt's company was founded three months ago.
When a demonstration was held in Latrobe a month ago, Rita Fiato of ServPro, a mold remediation and repair company in Greensburg, had K9 Mold Service check out a nursing home where a sprinkler head had malfunctioned, causing mold.
"I was amazed at what Kody can do," she said.
"Kody found mold areas in each of the four walls, saving us from having to rip up the entire wall to discover the mold, and reducing the cost for mold remediation," she said.
Lloyd Hyde, operations manager for Metro Restoration Cleaning Service, Inc., another mold remediation and repair company in Bethel Park, said Kody recently demonstrated her ability to find the mold quickly and accurately.
"Kody can detect mold that is not relatively apparent where it could be behind walls or areas not readily visible or accessible," said David Ginsburg of the Center for Environmental & Occupational Training, Inc. based in East Pittsburgh.
"But if no smell is present, then Kody can do a better job of finding it," he added.
Kody functions best indoors and once remediation is completed, she returns to check if all the mold has been removed, Hewitt said.
Kody is just one tool in a mold inspector's toolbox. She can locate the mold in half the time it takes traditional mold inspectors to find, as well as reduce the area of remediation at half the cost or less than traditional mold detection, he claims.
Hewitt charges $165 for two rooms and $295 for a full house inspection, both on the outside to determine any leakage or water infiltration there and the inside.
