Meet Archie, the blind truffle hunting schnauzer

Posted on 17 July, 2018

Nine months ago, Archie the six-year-old Schnauzer suddenly and unexpectedly lost his eyesight, leaving his owners devastated.  

Due to an extremely rare condition called Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome, it took only a couple of weeks for Archie to lose his sight.

Straight away, Archie’s owner Michelle Walton knew that she had to find a way to keep Archie stimulated and happy, so she came up with the idea of training him to become a truffle-hunting dog, given his newly heightened sense of smell.

While this may seem a somewhat lofty goal, Michelle explains from the day that she brought Archie home at just eight weeks old, he loved constant stimulation. This came in the form of a backyard full of agility courses which involved Archie running through a tunnel, walking along a plank and jumping over hurdles.

Archie with his truffles

Michelle says that it was important for her to maintain this stimulation as a means of rebuilding Archie’s confidence as he became quite depressed after losing his sight. After researching ‘living with a visually impaired dog’, Michelle found articles that suggested ‘keeping routines familiar, keeping walks familiar, and avoiding moving furniture around at home’.

“We read that ‘blind dogs can go on to live normal happy lives’,” she explains. “But we didn’t want Archie to live a ‘normal happy life’. We wanted Archie to live an ‘extraordinary very happy life’!”.

Before losing his sight, Archie had already begun truffle hunting training, which involved placing a small piece of truffle in small plastic container, inserting a hole in the top, and allowing Archie to smell the aroma.

Michelle would then hide the containers behind furniture in the lounge room and around the backyard. She would then ask Archie to sit, reward him, then ask him to “look”. When Archie found a container, Michelle would reward him with a treat and then command him to tap the container with his paw. She would then repeat this scenario until he had found all the containers.

Michelle and Archie.

Dogs are traditionally used for truffle hunting because their extremely sensitive sense of smell can detect truffles buried deep beneath the ground. Lighter than truffle pigs, they’re trained to not disturb the root structure of the surrounding trees, allowing for truffles to grow in the future.

After losing his sight, Archie had to learn several new commands. When approaching a step or curb Michelle says “Archie, step”. When he is off-lead at the park and looks like he’s about to run into something she says “Archie, careful” and he slows down. These commands along with the previous commands, allowed Michelle to develop a method of helping him navigate the fields of Terra Preta Truffles in Braidwood without vision.

After six months, Archie has completed his truffle-hunting training and now helps at Terra Preta. Michelle says that “Archie is back to the old Archie” – back to leading the way on his walks, up and down the stairs all on his own and running around the park. He may not be as fast as he used to be, but Michelle is “just so happy, relieved and proud of what he has achieved in such a short period of time.”

“We really believe continuing to do everything we used to do with Archie before he lost his sight has really helped him get his confidence back.”

Archie in his truffle hunting gear.

Within his truffle hunting career, Michelle says that Archie has found several truffles of varying qualities and has been given his own paddock at Terra Preta which has been named ‘Archie’s Patch’.

When reflecting on the whole experience, Michelle says that at the time that Archie went blind, it was very difficult for all concerned. However, with time, commitment and support of the family and close friends, they have “made the absolute best of a very disappointing and disheartening situation.”

“People’s initial response was ‘poor Archie is he happy?’. But now we can confidently say that Archie is living an extraordinary, very happy life!”