Truffle Dog Training Seminar 2009
Wanna teach Rover to fetch something more delectable than the daily paper? How about a truffle hunting class?
For the first time, a two-day seminar on truffle dog training is being offered as part of the annual Oregon Truffle Festival in late January near Eugene. Here’s what the Truffle Festival website says:
“That truffles, the grandest of delicacies, depend on pigs and dogs for their harvest lies at the heart of their mystique, but until now that part of their charm could be experienced only in the hills of southern Europe. We are delighted therefore to present OTF’s first annual Truffle Dog Training Seminar, the only event of its kind in North America.
The Truffle Dog Training Seminar is a unique opportunity not only to observe the handling and training of skilled truffle dogs, but to introduce your own dog to the scent of both Oregon and French black truffles. This two day event begins in the classroom, with lectures on canine scent detection and the fundamentals of scent training . . . On the second day, participants have a one of a kind opportunity to engage in an authentic hunt for wild truffles in their natural habitat, untouched by human hands.”
The training is open to just 12 lucky dogs.
If you’d prefer to eat truffles rather than hunt for them, the Oregon Truffle Festival is packed with opportunities. Along with educational workshops and grower’s forums, the “Grand Truffle Dinner” is a five course meal spiked with plenty of Oregon’s native winter white and black truffles — all paired with Oregon wines.
For those who can’t make the January 29th to 31st Truffle Festival, I can offer an Edible Idaho radio show on one man’s attempt to bring truffles to southern Idaho: It’s called Truffle Fever
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture. |
Thanks for this interesting post. I had read (in Gareth Renowden’s “The Truffle Book”) that commercial harvesting in Oregon was done by raking so hopefully with more trained dogs the Oregon truffles reaching the market will allow people to taste proper ripe Oregon truffles (which I hear are as good as European truffles) and cause less damage to the forests.
Some people are also trying to cultivate truffles — as my NPR radio show “Truffle Fever” explores — by inoculating the roots of certain types of young trees with truffle spores. They hope to eventually have cultivated truffle orchards.
[...] See also the Northwest Food News article: Teach Your Dog a New Trick: Truffle Hunting [...]