Training protocol: Research dogs for Boletus mushrooms

The present study describes the main steps and results of a training program designed to train dogs for finding mushrooms of the Boletus genus. Two adult female dogs, a Labrador Retriever and a Rottweiler, were trained by Clicker Training method. For the training, intact and frozen mushrooms to ensure their preservation were used. The training process includes a basic education phase. After this, there was a phase in which the signalling targets are taught, the signals will be used by the subjects to indicate the finding of a mushroom. In the next phase the dog learns olfactory research. Simulated research on whole and fresh mushrooms are organized with progressively increasing difficulty to simulate an exit in woods with the placement of various mushrooms. The final phase involves olfactory discrimination towards other mushrooms species and poisonous species. Our results demonstrate that dogs can be trained for mushroom detection.