On The Truffle Hunt…

The smells! The smells! There’s something alive under this earth… right beneath my paws, I can smell the life coursing through its roots and its thickly pungent flesh. Both Sonny and I know how it works. When the human gets up before it is light, then we are going hunting! There is something about the way he looks and the way he moves that tells us we are going to the place with lots of trees, where there are a million sounds and smells and… so many trees! There’s no food in our bowls when we go hunting for those round things covered with soil. The constant food cravings that are this canine life of ours fuels us in our quest to earn treats… and all for that which our human most loves… truffles.

There are a million sounds in the forest. Humans never really appreciate just how noisy it is here in the Apennine Mountains. They hear the birds, but not the leaves falling, the larvae scratching beneath the surface of the tree bark, the moles, worms and bugs under the earth and the thriving activity of life in this wilderness. Sonny and I can hear it all. We race through the undergrowth of the forest, constantly snuffling and searching for a hint of the scent that means treats! We don’t often find it, but our human gives us a biscuit at the end of the hunt anyway. When we do find it though, the human gets very happy, especially if the truffle we dig up is big. We once found one that was the size of Sonny’s head and the human was happy for many full moons. I really don’t know what it is they like about them… I tried eating one once and it didn’t taste anything like meat. I got into trouble for that, so I never tried it again.

This morning, the air is cold, but I hardly feel it through the excitement of being in the place of big trees and a million smells. And then I pick up one smell amongst the million. A random memory association clicks in my brain and I know what it means: Treats! Sonny smells it too. I follow the scent, my nose deep in the old and rotten leaves on the ground. Once detected, the scent is easy to follow and it takes us to the base of a large gnarled oak tree. Digging is the fun part and the soil is wet and dark at our tearing paws. The smell becomes overpowering and I can see it now… the thing the human loves so much. He starts walking towards us – I can even smell his excitement – and I try my best to lift the truffle from the earth without breaking its skin or slobbering on it too much.

The human’s eyes light up. This must be good: maybe two, maybe three treats’ worth of truffle. He scoops me up in his arms and lovingly says those golden words; that phrase that is a beacon of light to all canine existence: “Good girl!”

I got FOUR treats too!