Truffles and Dogs

Truffles and Dogs

I have discovered on this trip that I love truffles. I don’t necessarily like paying for them, but I do love to eat them. So when we saw an opportunity to go truffle hunting, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Our guide, Michael, and his two dogs, Mina and Roxy, led us into the woods, gave us some stylin’ rubber boots and we set off into the unknown. No experience necessary. Within 30 seconds, Michael was frantically digging where one of his dogs had scratched. He was so excited, smelling the earth, crumbling it in his hands and gingerly prying the soil up with his small shovel. Yep, ‘we’ had found a something good. Gold. Better than gold. The elusive white truffle. To be honest, we were somewhat convinced that this was a set-up. It was not.

Every time the dogs alerted, Michael was truly excited. We found white truffles, which were finally in season, and black truffles, which were at the end of their season. His enthusiasm was contagious. Black truffles pay about 300 Euros/kg. White truffles pay 3000-6000 Euros/kg. Yeah, you read that right. Wow. I don’t think we’re getting a cut…

The hardest part about truffle hunting with dogs is making sure the dogs don’t eat and/or damage the truffles when they dig. Our job was to watch the dogs and if we saw one of them scratch at the dirt, we had to run over and stop him. Somehow, we didn’t mind that we paid to be Michael’s helpers/workers for a couple of hours. Michael has figured out how to work the system; us tourists will pay for all kinds of ‘experiences’. LOL. Honestly? We loved it. It was so fun to watch the dogs hunt around and then to watch Michael dig for treasure.

A full…okay, a half morning’s work and we were starving. We decided to take advantage of our location to find a restaurant that served a truffle dish or two. A gorgeous restaurant on top of the hill overlooking the valley was the perfect spot to enjoy some white truffle pasta and a black truffle chicken dish. So delicious. We then couldn’t resist buying some truffle products to take home.

Yeah, we got sucked in to the marketing, but how could we not? Truffles really are delicious.

Is it bad that we couldn’t tell the difference between the white and black truffles in our dishes?

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