Mia is one of two Patterdale Terriers on Graduate's working K9 team. The Patterdale is a small working terrier, bred to go to ground and stay on its quarry. That build is what makes her useful on a rodent job: she is compact enough to work under decks, through dense planting, and along tight foundation lines, and she has the drive to follow a scent trail to its source.
Mia works both sides of the job. In detection, she covers ground a person cannot: where an inspector has to look for droppings, rub marks, and openings one at a time, she works the air and the floor line and tells her handler where the activity is. In abatement, she goes into the burrows and harborage she has located and removes the rodents living there.
Mia trained with Kimberly Camera at Coastal K9 & Pest Solutions, alongside Hugo. Kim came to pest work from FEMA Urban Search and Rescue, and she trains detection dogs to the same standard: the dog locates, the handler confirms, and the finding drives the work that follows.
Graduate's first canine job alongside Kim was rodent abatement at a Brooklyn apartment complex. The grounds were planted in dense vegetation, and the burrow systems under it could not be found by people working the site on foot. The dogs found them.
The dogs worked detection across a 1.6 million square foot facility in Pennsylvania. At that scale, a visual inspection takes days and still leaves gaps. A detection dog narrows the building down to the places that need attention.
The first job Graduate's team ran without Kim on site was a large single-family home. Working with Ryan alone, the dogs located the rats in the yard.
Rodent Detection · Abatement · Consulting