Dog training for truffles.

That’s right, dogs form a critical part of a truffle hunting team, being used for their unrivalled sense of smell. But as we’re fast learning, hunting truffles with success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a serious amount of training of both the dogs and the owners. And then a little more for good measure!

Last March, we welcomed Lucy, a Lagotto Romagnolo puppy, into our Flinders Truffles family. Not only is she gorgeously cute with her chocolate brown curls but her breed is synonymous with truffle hunting since they were used widely for that purpose during both World Wars. Lagotto Romagnolos are known for their intelligence, stamina and of course, great sense of smell -all essential traits for a hunting dog. No pressure Lucy, but we had some high expectations!

There’s no such thing as ‘too early’ to start scent training a dog. So from Lucy’s earliest days on the farm, we’ve been getting her acquainted with the distinctive smell of truffles. We started by soaking wooden clothes pegs in truffle oil and holding them under Lucy’s nose whilst saying the word ‘truffle’. This simple action can be enough to start building a word association. As Lucy got a little older, we started hiding small pieces of truffle in containers around the garden. These are called ‘targets’. It’s important to also hide some empty containers (controls) too so you know if the dog is smelling the plastic or the truffle. And when playing hide and seek with a hunting dog, we also learnt that it’s imperative you hide your tracks, otherwise they’ll simply follow where you went. Clever! It’s all about outsmarting the dog by covering lots of the garden with Jane’s scent, by touching a range of the foliage and taking a few false paths to throw them off your scent – and keep them on the right one!

Lucy has been a delight to train and was certainly responding to our training, even our beloved spaniel Herbie was getting in on the action! But we felt we needed some additional support to take Lucy to the next level. Cue Steve Austin; a globally recognised, professional dog scent trainer who runs courses in Sydney. So, a few months ago, Lucy and Jane headed off on a road trip with some serious training ahead of them. Enrolled into a five-day intensive course, Lucy was one of 11 dogs including a Bichon and a Labrador, all there to develop their scent skills. Some were there for wildlife conservation, some for health issues detection and some were there for truffle training.

An intense, fascinating and empowering course ensued. Lucy and Jane were put through their paces. Starting in the classroom, training started with a green wall featuring a range of holes with conduit pipes hidden behind. Upon command, the dogs had to select the right hole where their particular scent was hiding. Upon doing so, the dog received instant recognition and a reward, be that food or a toy – depending on their own motivation. For Lucy, it’s all about the food. With Steve’s guidance, we moved away from typical doggy treats and Lucy was soon living her best life enjoying small pieces of roast chicken. And with a superior treat, came far superior results! It was a case of taking a step back to take a giant leap forward once on Steve’s course. Both Lucy and Jane became more comfortable and more confident in their skills as the course progressed – learning so much to bring back to the farm.

Now it’s about practice, practice, practice through continual training. This means training sessions every day, sometimes twice a day if time allows. For the moment, Lucy is proficient at hunting out purposely hidden truffles. The next step will be to find wild truffles on the farm. A future goal will be to just sniff out the mature truffles and leave the others until they’re ready. But for now, it’s one day at a time. Over the coming months, Lucy (and Herbie her sidekick) are training hard for their first official truffle hunt on the farm this winter. What they will find, is yet to be determined. Watch this space!

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