It never ceases to amaze me how talented dogs’ noses are. Their incredible sense of smell comes in handy not only for them personally but also for us. Just take police dogs for example. These dogs’ sniffers are literally used to help fight crime! That’s awesome, to say the least.
Ms. Terry is also aware of just how useful dogs’ noses can be. When her sniffer-in-training dog, Poppy, used her nostrils to find a very large truffle mushroom a few weeks ago on her family’s farm near Deloraine, Tasmania, Australia, she was in awe.
“It’s the biggest truffle we’ve ever had here,” Ms. Terry said. She went on to explain that the truffle weighed 910 grams, which is a little over two pounds. That beats the record for the biggest truffle the farm has had to date!
The massive size of the fungus was surely a shock to Ms. Terry. Poppy has been training to search for truffles for a while now. However, Ms. Terry was stunned at the length of time it took for her trusty pup to get ahold of the truffle. You don’t really know how big a truffle is going to be until you harvest it.
“Poppy just started digging and didn’t stop, then I started to see how big it was. It just kept going and I started to get more and more excited.”
Even Ms. Terry’s father, who has been working at the farm for decades, said he never saw a truffle remotely close to its size.
“My dad Tim was at the farm too and I called out to him to come over, he was shocked to see it,” Ms. Terry explained “He founded Tasmanian Truffles more than 20 years ago and it’s one of the biggest he’s seen.”‘
To put things into perspective, a truffle over 500 grams (~1.10 pounds) is considered large. Although, there have been other truffles in the Tasmania area that were found to be greater than 1 kilo (~2.2 pounds), says Ms. Terry. Nonetheless, the truffle Poppy found is still very large, especially given how rare these mushrooms can be. They need specific soil to grow, and unlike many other crops, you can’t just plant them from seed. For that reason, they’re considered a luxury food.
“Typically a truffle of this size would have been sold internationally, they’re somewhat of a novelty,” she said. “Even a restaurant here couldn’t have used all of it so I had to cut it up.”
Although a single truffle can cost well over a thousand dollars, Ms. Terry says “It will probably all end up in my tummy.”
Catch a peek at the oversized truffle in this video. Wow, that is huge!
