Last Updated on March 29, 2026
“Three! Two! One! Start!”
At the emcee’s shout and a command from his handler, Barcus puts his nose down and begins sniffing the loose dirt, his white-tipped tail wagging happily as he trots across the livestock arena. Like the other competitors in the Joriad North American Truffle Dog Championship, the reddish-brown and white Pembroke Welsh corgi is in a race to find five truffle-scented “targets.” Only the fastest truffle-sniffing dogs will move on to the next round.
The small crowd of spectators, scattered across the bleachers on one side of the cavernous building, watches intently. The Joriad — the name is a mashup of Jory, Oregon’s state soil, and the Olympiad — tests amateur truffle dogs’ ability to find buried truffles. The event, held every February at the Lane County Events Center in Eugene, kicks off the annual Oregon Truffle Festival.
The Joriad competition begins with each of more than 30 dog contestants and their handlers examining a row of 17 trays, only five of which contain a truffle scent target. The dogs have to find two of the targets — small plastic tubes filled with truffle oil-soaked cotton balls — to advance to the second round.
When they find one, the scorekeepers shadowing the handlers raise a fist in the air with the target and yell, “Truffle!” Cheers erupt in the stands. It’s all a bit much for some of the dogs. Almost a third of the competitors get distracted by the strange surroundings, the crowd, and the other dogs and can’t seem to focus on the task. Others, though, like Barcus and a yellow Labrador retriever named Levi, are quick to scan the trays and find the targets.
Roughly a third of the dogs are Lagotto Romagnolos, the breed favored for truffle hunting in Europe. Breeding doesn’t guarantee a winner, however, and the competition is open to any breed. Since the Joriad was established in 2015, champions have represented a wide variety of dogs. Past winners have included a Chihuahua, a border collie, a golden retriever, a Lagotto Romagnolo, a yellow Labrador, and a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, among others.
As the dogs search, Bob Walker, the dog trainer and emcee of the event, and Kristina Leipzig, the Joriad’s lead organizer, field questions from the audience. One of the first questions: What makes a good truffle dog?
“That is a common question,” said Walker. “And I always ask, ‘What dog do you know, what dog do you like?’ And I’ll say, ‘That’s the one you want.’ You want a dog you like because 99 percent of time you’re going to be just living with this dog.”
What makes a good truffle dog? A good nose and a strong drive for what Walker calls “the hook.”
“You want something the dog will do anything for,” Walker said. “Some dogs like treats, but you have to find out what the dog’s hook is. You can’t say, ‘I want my dog to go on this one squeaky toy.’ The dog might say, ‘I hate that squeaky toy, and won’t do anything.’ So, you find what the dog wants. That’s that dog’s hook. And you train to that hook.”
Training starts with nose work. The dog has to learn that finding the truffle scent gets rewarded, then learn to find it wherever it might be hidden. The handler’s task? To learn to recognize the changes in the dog’s behavior when it finds the target.
“You really want to train on targets that you know that you want your dog to find,” Leipzig said. “So, I use primarily truffle oil because I know that oil is from ripe truffles. Then the dog will go and find the ripe truffles and not the rotten truffles or truffles that are not ripe yet.”
How long does it take to train a dog to find truffles? That depends on the dog and the trainer.
“Tomorrow, we start the dog training, and in one day we’ll give them the foundation,” Walker said. “Then 80 to 90 percent of the dogs find truffles [the next day]. Are they ready to go out commercially? No. They have the foundation. Now they have to work. It takes a long time.”
Out on the arena floor, tails are wagging as the dogs work down the line of trays. At the end of the first round, 22 contestants have successfully found two targets and advanced to the second round.
Levi may be an amateur, but he’s got the focus of a pro as he scours the arena’s dirt floor for a whiff of truffle. In the second round, the targets could be buried anywhere in the loose dirt. When he starts digging, Pamela Parker, his handler, pulls the black tube free, then tells Levi to find another. He does, quickly finding four more targets.
By the second round, spectators are familiar with the competitors, and many handlers join them between rounds. Even from the stands, the dogs’ enthusiasm is obvious — and somehow contagious. To them, it’s a fantastic game: find the truffle, get a treat!
Barcus, the corgi, has some stiff competition. Levi, the yellow lab, and Lazlo, a Lagotto Romagnolo, beat Barcus’ time in the second round. They both advance to the final round of the competition, where the five speediest truffle-hunting dogs test their skills outdoors in the forest. The final round of the Joriad isn’t open to the public. Fans have to wait until evening to find out which dog has become this year’s champion (spoiler alert: It’s Lazlo).
The festival offers fans the opportunity to sniff out truffles — and taste them, too — at several other events in Eugene, the Salem area and McMinnville. Events that are open to the public include truffle dinners, truffle-hunting forays, cooking classes, a fresh truffle marketplace, winery luncheons, and classes on truffle dog training and truffle farming. Ticket information is available online at the Oregon Truffle Festival.
