We are very proud of Silhouette Kyra and Silhouette Luca who live with Karyn & Helen at Mornington, who besides showing instinct to work in a traditional sense have made a splash in a non traditional working world of Truffle scenting. This is a great achievement in a world that is by trend dominated by a European dog breed. For an Australian "working mans dog" to achieve what these 4 have in such a short time is an eye opener to many in the truffle industry and makes us very proud.
They started by doing K9 Nose Works courses and have trialled in Scenting. They moved onto truffle training and have had great success as this report will explain.
‘Koolies Nose’ and have spent the past 12 months training and bringing ‘Silhouette’ Kyra onboard for the last Truffle season. At the time of writing, we still hold the ‘Worlds First’ two Koolies to be trained and proven Truffle dogs.
Ballarat to Bright, Main Ridge to Mansfield and Bendigo to Beechwoth the Koolies Nose Team did get about and for our first Truffle Season seeking T Melanosproum and T Borchii.
Along the way we all have learned so much and shared this with many of farm owners we met along the way. One we met bought their farm a few years ago and had never seen truffles, let alone had dogs over their 500 trees. ‘Silhouette’ Kyra and Luca identified truffles and when we asked the owners if they wanted to play in the dirt they confessed they had no idea what to do. The Koolies Nose humans went into training mode on many aspects from digging to grading to selling and the future coming seasons.
In July Kyra found our biggest Truffle 332gm (washed)!
Our last farm for the season in August Luca air scented two and a half rows away from the row where we were working a 521gm (unwashed) monster. This was also the biggest this truffle farm had ever unearthed as well!
The Winter weather was ever so kind to us minus 7 degrees in the high-country mornings and crisp sunny days. August saw us in the Beechworth area in below zero, sleet, hail, rain and major river flood watches.
The Team found over 9 kilos of truffles, met many lovely folk, visited some areas of Victoria of outstanding beauty (and great local produce) and secured bookings for 2018 Truffle season!
I am currently training a human and their two dogs to be used by their owners on their Truffle farm in the coming years. I also plan to train another Koolie before next season to join the Koolies Nose Team and possibly another Koolie owner and their Koolie for the future demands.
