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We have dates for 2023 Truffle Hunts. Contact us for hunts in your area. The dogs are ready and keen to hunt and hoping for some dry, frosty days.

We’re looking forward to meeting our growers again and finding new truffles.

Call Prue on 027 777 8220 to arrange your hunt.

May week 4 - Rotorua / BOP

May week 5 - Auckland / North / Waikato

June week 1 - Rotorua / BOP / Opotiki / Tauranga

June week 2 / 3 – Hawkes Bay / Wairarapa / Manawatu

June week 3 - Rotorua / BOP

June week 4 – Auckland / Waikato

July week 1 / 2 – Taranaki / Hawkes Bay / Wairarapa / Manawatu

July week 3 - Rotorua / BOP / Opotiki / Tauranga

July week 4 - Auckland / North / Waikato

July week 5 - Hawkes Bay / Wairarapa / Manawatu

August week 1 - Rotorua / BOP / Opotiki / Tauranga

August week 2 - Auckland / North / Waikato

August week 3 - Hawkes Bay / Wairarapa / Manawatu

Caph, our Belgian Malinois, has proven a very good truffle hunter. Unlike the other dogs, she sits and points her nose at the spot. Last year, she found the only tree in 600 with truffle underneath. One very excited grower!

Maze, another Belgian Malinois is full of energy and loves working. He’s ready to hunt!

Sadly, we no longer have our lovely old Labrador Sirius. She was our first truffle dog and found many hundreds of kilos of truffles for growers in New Zealand and Australia. A local gin distiller has named a truffle gin, Sirius’ Find after our girl.

We have dates for 2022 Truffle Hunts. Contact us for hunts in your area. The dogs are ready and keen to hunt and hoping for some dry, frosty days.

We’re looking forward to meeting our growers again and finding new truffles.

May week 2 - Lower North Island

May week 3 - Rotorua / BOP

May week 4 - Auckland area

June week 1 - Hawkes Bay

June week 2 - Lower North Island

June week 3 - Rotorua / BOP

June week 4 - Auckland area

July week 1 - Hawkes Bay

July week 2 - Lower North Island

July week 3 - Rotorua / BOP

July week 4 - Auckland area

July week 5 - Hawkes Bay

August week 1 - Lower North Island

August week 2 - Rotorua / BOP

August week 3 - Auckland area

August week 4 - Hawkes Bay

Sadly, we have lost our beautiful, gentle girl Sirius. Sirius was 12 years old and was our original truffle hunting dog.

She was a truffle hunter for nine years and found many first truffles for growers in New Zealand and Australia.

Sirius was a real character - gentle, talkative, demanding and so obsessed with food. She ate everything - horse food, goat food, chicken food, bird seed, possum and kangaroo carcasses, rat bait (twice), chocolate and anything else that she could get away with. She had real “Dogattude”.

Goodbye our beautiful old girl. We miss you.

TruffleDogs will be truffle hunting in the Bay of Plenty between June 12th and 21st. We’ve looking forward to finding even better truffle in mid-June.

We’ll be based in Rotorua from 12 - 16 June and around Opotiki / Te Puke from 17-21 June.

If you would like the dogs to search for truffle, please call Prue now on

027 777 8220

TruffleDogs first hunts will be in the lower North Island between June 2nd and 10th. We’ve found truffle already, albeit unripe. We’ll be hunting from Taupo south around these dates.

If you would like the dogs to search for truffle, please call Prue now on

027 777 8220

Welcome Maze, the new addition to our truffle hunting team. Maze is a young rehomed Belgian Malinois. Typical of the Malinois breed, he is fast, agile, keen and quick to learn.

Maze will be fully ready to hunt for truffles at the beginning of the 2021 season and he’ll get better with every hunt.

Maze will replace Sirius, who has finished her hunting days and will be the TruffleDogs.nz “Ambassadog”

Caph had an accident in February. She had an altercation with a truck and broke her radius and ulna bones in her left foreleg.

She had a major operation and has now got two plates, numerous screws and a bone marrow graft. She has been so good and luckily doesn’t mind being in her crate resting her leg.

Caph is on the mend and has had the splint and bandages removed. She is still only allowed to walk for about 10 minutes per day, but is improving all the time.

Final x-ray in a few weeks to ensure the bones are mending. Thanks to our great vets.

Just finished reading “The Truffle Underground” by Ryan Jacobs, an investigative reporter. Published in 2019, the book is an expose of the truffle industry in Italy and France. After reading this, I’m very glad my dogs are working in NZ and not exposed to the perils outlined in this book.

An interesting book and available from the library for summer reading along with a long cool drink!

After being forced to delay our last northern hunt by border controls in and out of Auckland, we finally managed to travel north again for one last hunt.

We didn’t expect to find any good truffle but hoped to at least find some rotten remains! But we were surprised to find lots of good Borchii truffle under a few newly producing trees. Peri was a star and kept unearthing truffle after truffle. One tree produced about eight or nine truffles.

This was a great end to our 2020 truffle hunting season.

Thank you to all our growers who welcomed us to their properties. It was super to meet old friends and growers who we haven’t seen for many years and to meet new growers.

For us, the dogs will keep training and will find some new scents to keep them alert and busy.

For the growers, they will be busy pruning and maintaining their trees and hoping for a good 2021 season.

Hawkes Bay is our destination. Catching up with old truffle friends, now producing truffle after many years. We had a good meeting with some of the growers and interested growers at Chesterhope Truffles. There is interest in forming regional co-ops to market and promote local truffle. We talked about our five seasons hunting in New South Wales and the differences and similarities between the Australian and NZ industries.

We found first truffle for one happy grower. After 13 years of growing trees, they now have a truffiere.

Back to Bay of Plenty and a group hunt for some very excited people. This time a mix of black and Borchii truffle. People love to watch the dogs hunt for truffle and even get to dig up truffle themselves.

Our first truffle hunts way back in 2011 were in the Rotorua, Opotiki, Gisborne areas and at that time, there was only truffle near Opotiki and Gisborne.

Now, we find Perigord truffle in the Rotorua area. Great to see that the persistence and care has paid off and Rotorua is producing some lovely truffle.

Off north once again to hunt many trees in warm, unseasonal weather. No need for hats and heavy coats. The dogs worked hard over many hours with no complaints!

Back to Opotiki where we found beautiful Perigord truffle at the property where we found the first truffle six years ago. Sirius still has the magic touch though she doesn’t work for as long as she used to. Also more truffle in Rotorua.

Pics from First Rimu Lane Hunt


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Away to our first northern area truffle hunts for 2020. The Dogs were interested in several trees, but sadly, no truffle yet. We talked to growers about our experiences with Spanish wells around trees and passed on details of tree growers and soil and root testing facilities.

The next trip was south and success finding first Perigord truffle for a happy grower. Trees are a mix of Hazel, Robur Oaks and Ilex Oaks aged between seven and fifteen years.

Already, we have regular weekly hunts scheduled for the whole truffle season…. there are limited days available, so please contact us now for hunts.

2017 - what a year for truffles in the Southern Highlands and Tablelands. We’ve been finding twice as much truffle as last year and more extra class. The girls have been working their little noses off and are getting only one or two days rest per week. The weather is perfect. Frosty and cold overnight and lovely blue sky days with little wind. Great hunting conditions. If you are around Canberra, take in some of the annual Truffle Festival. Or visit Blue Frog Truffles on a truffle tour and see Sirius, Peri and Caph in action.

TruffleDog already has bookings for the 2017 winter and limited days for searches.

Contact us now for availability.

TruffleDog was asked to see if a grower’s dog was doing a good job. Late in the season, he’d found about 400g - the first truffle ever, so very exciting. Sirius and Peri hunted 400 trees and found another 2.5kg that had not been located. If you are concerned that your dog may be missing finds, call us for an independent search.

Another successful season in NSW and Victoria. The weather was wetter and warmer than the previous year. We found more growers starting to find truffle. We’re always pleased when a growers first truffles are found after years of work.

Welcome to our new truffle hunter in training, Caph. Named after a star, Caph is a Belgian Shepherd, a Malinois. She is two years old and super smart. She’ll be ready to hunt in time for the winter and we are looking forward to her finding lots of truffle.

Strange but true. Had a call from a grower who had an oak with truffles under it in January. We went with Sirius and Peri to have a look and found what looked like very immature truffle with faint odour. The grower sent the truffle away for testing and the result came back - Melanosporum! One very confused tree. Let’s hope that the other trees produce in the winter.

Though it’s still the middle of summer and very hot, start planning your winter truffle hunts. If you are a grower and don’t have your own dog, or if you want to check that your dog is finding truffle, contact us now to arrange hunts for the coming season.

Queanbeyan, NSW was the venue for the 2015 ATGA Conference. It was a very interesting, well attended event and we met old friends, growers, buyers of truffle, scientists, dog handlers and others associated with the industry. We spent a great day with respected, expert dog trainer and handler, Steve Austin and learned new skills and training methods. We highly recommend truffle growers to join the Association and benefit from all the expertise and knowledge found in its membership.

Cold weather, with plenty of frosts and even snow. Good finds in NSW in the last few weeks. Hard-working Sirius and Perigord sniffed out plenty of truffle. Happy truffle producers with finds of between three and six kilograms of quality truffle. Some quantity of over-ripe truffle, mainly on the surface. But digging produced good quality truffle further down.

One tree produced eight beautiful truffles totalling around 750 grams. Other trees have unripe truffle waiting for harvest. Most trees producing truffle are Ilex, aged between six and fifteen years. Next hunt at the beginning of August. Contact us now for a search.