Michael F. Morin says he has cutting-edge technology in the fight against that growing scourge of city life, bedbugs.

His cutting-edge technology is: dogs. Two of them, Ruby and Pasha.

Ruby is a beagle. Pasha is a basenji “and maybe part terrier,” said Donald Frey, Mr. Morin’s partner in a four-month-old company that dispatches them to root out the speck-sized parasites in apartments and schools. And also four-star hotels (and three- and two-star ones) that worry about being mentioned in the same breath as “fleabag.”

Alas, a bedbug-free place is not necessarily flea-free. Ruby and Pasha have a nose for Cimex lectularius, the common bedbug, and only Cimex lectularius, Mr. Morin said. Fleas are different.

Ruby and Pasha act mild mannered and well behaved, not like fang-baring attack dogs that want to sink their teeth into whatever is close by. When Ruby and Pasha smell a bedbug, they don’t lap it up; they simply sit down.