Can your dog dig up a luxury item for your dinner? Truffle hunting is a popular pastime
By Kim Campbell Thornton
Andrews McMeel Syndication
A truffle hunt was our favorite day of a recent trip to Italy. Hiking beautiful countryside with dogs, then eating delicious scrambled eggs and soft, young Pecorino Romano cheese with a freshly found truffle shaved over the top: What could be better?
But you don’t have to travel to Europe to go truffle hunting. You can teach your own dog to hunt for the treasured tubers, and depending on where you live, you may well be successful.
Truffles are found in the Pacific Northwest -- which ranges from northern California into British Columbia -- and from the southern United States into Ontario. As with most scenting activities, any dog can learn, although professional truffle hunters seek certain qualities in their dogs.
At Truffle Hill in Australia -- Australia is a primary producer of truffles -- truffle hunter Adrian Mielke looks for dogs with high drive and stamina who are food-motivated and don’t mind searching in wet and cold conditions -- cool, moist air holds scent closer to the ground.
“In our experience, the best breeds are Labradors or kelpies, but many mixed ‘hybrid’ breeds have been very successful,” he says. Other dogs with good scenting skills include beagles, German shorthaired pointers, spaniels or other retrieving or hunting dogs.
At Black Truffle Lodge in Italy’s Umbria region, where we went on our hunt, Mac (more formally known as Nathan McMillan Ryde, co-owner of the lodge with his wife, Francesca Chiacchiarini) says truffle dogs are started as puppies simply by playing fetch with them to encouraging their retrieving instinct. Gradually, the ball is switched for an egg-shaped plastic container with holes, which can hold the truffle and disseminate its scent while protecting it from destruction by rambunctious puppies. Mac and truffle hunter Luca like using dogs who are a blend of springer spaniel, English setter and pointer. Later, young dogs in training go out with more experienced dogs to learn the secrets of truffle location.
What if you don’t live in an area where truffles are found? Your dog can still learn, thanks to online training courses and the availability of truffles by mail or from your local gourmet store.
And you don’t need a fancy dog such as a Lagotto Romagnolo, considered by some to be the Lamborghini of truffle dogs, thanks to their Italian heritage and traditional use in truffle hunting.
Washington state-based truffle hunter and dog trainer Kristin Rosenbach offers lessons in person or online (wagnificentk9.com). She’s had clients succeed with many different breeds and mixes, including a Vizsla, a Staffordshire bull terrier, flat-coated retrievers, an Anatolian mix and a papillon. Her own dogs are two border collies, a Shetland sheepdog and a Belgian tervuren, the first of their breeds to truffle hunt in the Pacific Northwest.
“Honestly, the only requirement is that someone has a good relationship with their dog,” she says.
As with any detection dog training, positive reinforcement coupled with scent association is key. Your dog should view hunting as a game with plenty of tasty rewards (not the truffles, though) or other desirable incentives, such as play with a favorite toy.
Rosenbach’s top tips for training dogs to find truffles are to use real truffles (not truffle oil), train outdoors and move the truffle underground as soon as possible. During training, she recommends staying away from truffle-producing locations, counterintuitive as that may seem. That allows you to control as many variables as possible so you can set up your dog for success.
Once a team in training is proficient at a mock truffle hunt -- a blind hunt in a forest that Rosenbach knows does not produce truffles -- she takes them out for a forest lesson.
Truffles are being cultivated and discovered in many new areas, so your dog could surprise you once trained.
“I suspect truffles are growing in a lot more places than we think they are, and that's just because there aren't enough of us out there looking,” Rosenbach says.
Q&A
Can my parrot
get avian flu?
Q: I keep hearing about avian flu. Do I need to worry that my parrot could get it? What about my neighbor’s chickens?
A: I went to my colleague Brian Speer, an avian specialist, for the answer to your question. The good news is that indoor companion birds like your parrot are at substantially less risk of exposure. On the other hand, backyard chickens, pet ducks or parrots or peafowl who live outdoors could be exposed to migrating waterfowl and shorebirds carrying the virus.
Common-sense vigilance is important, Speer says. In zoos and many waterfowl collections, birds are being brought indoors until it’s known that the virus isn’t in the wild bird population. And veterinarians who treat birds are being extremely cautious about the birds they allow into their clinics. For instance, if a client calls and says, “I went out to my chicken flock and 18 out of 30 are dead suddenly, and four more are sick and dying. Can I bring one in who’s still alive?” the answer is going to be no.
“We do a lot of careful screening because we do not want to put existing hospitalized patients at risk,” Speer says.
Signs of HPAI -- highly pathogenic avian influenza -- include the rapid onset of serious respiratory and neurologic problems, with the bird quickly progressing to death. The University of Minnesota Extension provides good information for backyard poultry owners: bit.ly/3xmd5K9.
Be pathogenic-aware but not pathogenic-paranoid. If your bird has been sneezing for four weeks, that’s not HPAI. Could your dog get it? Not really.
Don’t bring home sick birds, and don’t feed wild birds. You don’t want them congregating in your area as that increases the potential for exposure.
“It’s not an easy scenario right now,” Speer says. “You don’t want to go overboard, and you don’t want to be too casual about it, either.” -- Dr. Marty Becker
Do you have a pet question? Send it to askpetconnection@gmail.com or visit Facebook.com/DrMartyBecker.
THE BUZZ
Search dogs help
in Syria, Turkey
-- Dog and handler teams from around the world converged on Turkey and Syria earlier this month to help find survivors from two devastating earthquakes. They included six specially trained dogs from Los Angeles County; the International Urban Search and Rescue Team from Fairfax, Virginia; and rescue teams with dogs from Britain, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, India, Libya, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland and Taiwan. Other organizations are helping the animals of Syria and Turkey. They include Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria, a nonprofit rescue and sanctuary that houses more than 1,800 cats; International Fund for Animal Welfare, which is partnering with Ernesto’s; and Pets in Turkey, a Swiss organization that aids stray animals.
-- How smart are cockatoos? Smart enough to craft and use tools, according to a study (bit.ly/3lyRNX1) of 10 adult Goffin’s cockatoos observed using their beaks to fashion wooden tools to extract seeds from tropical fruit known as sea mango. This behavior demonstrates the ability to not only make tools but also to use them to perform high-precision tasks. The opportunistic avian foragers from Indonesia solved problems -- such as how to break into that tasty fruit -- by creating and using tools as wedges, cutters and spoons, researchers report, putting them at the same level as specialized tool users such as New Caledonian crows or the great apes.
-- Cats have four favorite places they prefer being petted. If you want to make your cat happy, rub gently beneath his chin, scratch the base of the ears, rub the cheek area behind the whiskers, and scratch the base of the tail. Why these areas? They’re where a cat’s scent glands are concentrated. When you rub those areas, you’re helping your cat to spread his scent around, which in turn makes him feel happy and content. -- Dr. Marty Becker, Kim Campbell Thornton and Mikkel Becker
ABOUT PET CONNECTION
Pet Connection is produced by a team of pet care experts. Veterinarian Dr. Marty Becker is founder of the Fear Free organization, co-founder of VetScoop.com and author of many best-selling pet care books. Kim Campbell Thornton is an award-winning journalist and author who has been writing about animals since 1985. Mikkel Becker is a behavior consultant and lead animal trainer for Fear Free Pets. Dr. Becker can be found at Facebook.com/DrMartyBecker or on Twitter at DrMartyBecker. Kim Campbell Thornton is at Facebook.com/Kim.CampbellThornton and on Twitter at kkcthornton. Mikkel Becker is at Facebook.com/MikkelBecker and on Twitter at MikkelBecker.