TRUFFLE DOGS?

For me, a life time dog lover, the most memorable moment on this trip was a visit to Domaile de Bramarel in Grignan, where we watched two darling Labrador Retrievers hunt for truffles. It was fascinating, it was magic. These babies belong to the Working Dogs category and boy, do they work. I was told some years ago that pigs used to be tasked until they start eating instead of retrieving their treasures from a good 10"+ under the surface. This family has been in the truffles business for 3 generations and have graduated many Labs on the job. On the word go they named a few top eateries in Hong Kong who are routine customers.

The Lab puppies normally join the farm about 9-weeks old, chaperoned by an older Lab, in this case Big Brother is 7-years old who will soon retire. Apparently they shaved truffles on their food to introduce them to the scent. Imagine the dogs waiting by their bowls for truffles to be shaved on dog chow? It is no different from what some of you would do (I certainly would not) at pricey Italian eats in Central during White Truffles season ... except you pay an arm and a leg for them. I was mesmerized to see these babies strolling through the woods, perfectly calm with tails wagging one minute, and all a sudden they stood still and started to dig. Bingo .. 2 lollipop size black truffles. A skeptic among us asked ' ... were these planted this morning before we arrived? .. ' If I were the animals I would give him a good bite on the shin, what an insulting thing to even suggest. BTW the 3 puppy pictures were mounted on the kitchen wall of the estate, along with medals, certificates, and paraphernalia from this unique, less than transparent, almost secretive and obviously still growing and extremely profitable industry that dates back to medieval times. Incredulous!