Olivia – The Truffle Hunting Dog!

15 Oct 2013, by Susan Alexander Truffles in Company News

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It is always great to get the expertise of someone to help your business grow. That is why you need to screen every person who will join your team, even if it means trusting a four-legged wonder to do the job.

Olivia – Italian Water Dog

Meet Olivia – the newest addition to the staff. She’s an Italian water dog that is specifically bred and trained to hunt truffles.

Early trufflehunting

Dogs like her were not the top choice to do the work back then. In the early days, only pigs do the job of sniffing and hunting truffles. These are also known as truffle hogs, who use their strong sense of smell to be able to locate and identify truffles from as deep as three feet underground. Swine’s nose work has proved to be really helpful for finding mature truffles, but eating these is inevitable, so it is best to keep a close eye on them while they do the job.

Now, dogs have surpassed pigs for finding truffles due to a lot of factors. For one, they have more energy and stamina to endure the task of sniffing and searching the truffles. This enables them to cover more areas of land in the process. Specially trained dogs are also attracted to mature truffles, thus prevents unnecessary digging and leaving unripe truffles deep in the ground.

Getting dogs to do the job of hunting truffles is quite expensive.They have to be trained well specifically for this purpose but once they’re done with it, they are proved to be a valuable asset to the business.

So the next time you eat your truffle, remember that someone like Olivia went to great lengths to find one for you.