Name: Luna

Breed: Border Collie

Age: 2 Years old (2023)

Reward: Food

Location:

Wongarra living on a producing truffle farm

with some 10-years-old and 5-year-old trees.

Previous Training:

Luna had started her truffle training with canine truffle training oil.

Main areas to work on:

Building search stamina

Increasing focus under distraction

Marking technique

Understanding canine body language

Course: Intermediate and Advanced

I was happy to start Luna on the Intermediate Truffle Training course.

Intermediate Course: Our main focus during the Intermediate Course was understand canine body language to understand when the dog is within the scent cone and narrowing in on the hide. Understanding the body language before the alert is more important than the alert itself. Once the dog feels understood it helps eliminate the frustration which leads to reduced stamina and reduced focus. Shaping a marking technique was another feature we focused on in this session.

Advanced: We begun marking real truffle locations with Kovu and then cross-checking Luna over these locations to see if she would alert to real underground truffles accurately under challenging weather conditions. She did an amazing job and found a few extra locations nearby known locations. We worked on helping her understand what happens after she finds truffle and get her reward. Her job to give us space to dig up the truffle and maybe is asked to re show if we need help while digging.

Outcome:

Once Luna felt understood she thrived in the truffle searching her focus improved dramatically and was happy to search for much longer and didn’t display her silly behaviors mid-way through a hunt. She was happy to search in challenging weather conditions and was consistently finding real truffle hides so she moved up to the advanced course in a month. She understood what alert her owner wanted and took her time to find the exact location producing a very accurate alert. Once she started the advance course, she was alerting to real underground truffles accurately and consistently.

Future:

During the off season between 2023-2024 Luna will be doing searches in more challenging locations/weather conditions to increase her ability to refocus herself and increase search stamina.

In the 2024 season I believe she will be finding real truffles with excellent focus and accuracy.

2024 Update:

When Kovu and I visited this season. We made sure to leave known truffle locations undisturbed so we could run Luna over these locations. She did perfect alerting to the truffles and very accurate.