The Truffle Hunters

“Olga is the best dog I’ve ever had,” says Pierro, boots crunching through the frost, a low sun filtering through the sparse tree-line. “She’s slow, she never rushes.” Plodding a few feet ahead Olga lowers her nose and begins to sniff the hard ground. “What have you found?” Pierro quizzes softly. What have you found?”

The Olga in question is a cheerful, seven-year-old barrel of truffle hunting dog. “She weighs 26kg!” says Pierro, heaving her into his arms, face full of pride. Her sense of smell is 400 time stronger than a human’s. She can smell a truffle from 50 metres away and will spend hours happily trudging through the forests and fields on the outskirts of Asti, in Italy’s verdant Piedmont region. 

“I still come out with her three or four times a week,” says Pierro, who, along with his wife, runs a small shop just down the road. Like plenty of men in the area, truffle hunting is both a hobby and—with a little bit of luck—an occasional secondary income. “A 300g white truffle can sell for €1,000 in a restaurant,” says Pierro, steadily pushing uphill and into a clearing, maintaining a commentary of encouragement and enquiry towards Olga, nose pressed tight to the earth. “I used to come out at night when I was younger,” says Pierro, “but now we mostly do the early mornings. It would take a human 30 years to learn her skills,” he says, “for her it was three years of training. Now she is a maestro.”