Richard Njoroge, who has been an exterminator for 18 years, didn’t find termites while inspecting a home he was preparing to buy in north Lawrence.

However, the newest employee of his pest management company was able to find termites that Njoroge had missed and he only had seven weeks of experience.

Laser Pest Management, a Perry-based pest-control company, has spent ,000 on a specially trained dog that sniffs out termites. The dog, Crockett, sits in place along an outside wall of a house after identifying termites. At Crockett's side is handler Dale Roubison.

But he isn’t an ordinary employee. The employee is Crockett, a 1-year-old rat terrier “mutt.” The difference between Crockett and other rat terriers is that she’s been through $9,000 worth of special training by an Alabama company to learn how to sniff out termites.

Dale Roubison, Njoroge’s partner in the business, said the Perry-based Laser Pest Management had decided to invest in the dog after realizing she could do a better job finding termites with her nose than they could with their eyes.

“This really takes all the guess work out of it,” Roubison said. “Without a dog, basically the only way to detect termites is to do a visual inspection. But it’s hard to look inside walls or along the front of a house with brick veneer without tearing stuff up.”

Roubison, who went through five days of training to handle the dog, simply says “go to work.” That phrase tells Crockett to begin sniffing along foundations, baseboards or whatever else Roubison points her toward. When she catches the scent of a termite, her nose pops up and she sits down in front of the spot to alert her owner.

Crockett was trained by FSI Inc., which specializes in training dogs that are commonly used by law enforcement employees. About five years ago, one of the company owners became frustrated with how exterminators were treating his home for termites. So he set out to see if a dog could detect termites. He found out that the insects give out enough pheromones for several breeds of canine to detect.

Njoroge said the dog’s ability to pinpoint the specific location of termites was one of the best aspects about the dog. Previously, if termites were found in one part of the home, exterminators basically had to assume they were in all parts of the home. So they would treat the entire house, often using harsh chemicals. The dog allows them to focus their most intensive treatments in particular areas of the home.

Plus, the furry employee has been good for business.

“In business you are always looking for something that makes you unique, and Crockett does that,” Njoroge said. “The customers seem real excited when they find out we have a dog that does this.”

FSI has trained about 60 termite-sniffing dogs, and other companies are picking up on the idea. Roubison said the dogs were becoming popular with extermination businesses in the South and on the East Coast.

The dogs are also beginning to catch on in the Midwest. Roubison said the only dogs he knew about in the area were one in western Kansas, one in Omaha, Neb., and one in Oklahoma City.

But he suspects that will change.

“I think it may start to become a trend,” Roubison said. “I believe some other companies will pick up a dog before long. If they’re smart, they will because there isn’t anything better.”