Trained to detect unauthorised explosives and mobile phones, Twiggy could be hard at work in a prison.
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But the nine-year-old Springer Spaniel lives a more refined life, sniffing out culinary delicacies in the rich, dark red soil of Robertson Truffles.
Watching her and her companions - which include expert truffle hunter Seal the black Labrador and four-year-old novice Echo - is one of the many delights of a truffle hunt at the Southern Highlands farm.
It opens to the public on select days throughout the week during each eight-week truffle season, from June to August.
Even in a cost-of-living crisis the allure of the aromatic Black Perigord truffles remains strong: by early June, Tanya and Patrick Moroney's calendar is already packed with hunt bookings and commercial orders for top restaurants.
"We tend to book out so quickly, but we do have a long lunch which is a degustation truffle lunch on August 9 that people can still get into," Tanya says.
How truffles grow
In late June, we joined eight other people booked to go and search under the branches of the English and European oak trees of the truffiere on a Wednesday morning.
Sunny and an unusually balmy 10 degrees, the hunt starts at the shed looking over the truffiere, with an outdoor firepit roaring away to keep off any cold.
There, Tanya and Patrick - who took over the farm about five years ago - explain the fascinating world of truffles.
"A truffle is a fungus, a very particular type of fungus that's actually a type of mushroom really except it grows underground," Tanya said.
"Like most mushrooms - any that you can see walking around through the forest - the vast part of the fungus, the mycelium, is under the ground and they each have a specific relationship with a specific tree.
"Our truffles grow in relation to oak trees."
The 317 oak trees in the truffiere were planted 18 years ago by the farm's original owners, late chemical engineer Ted Smith.
"The saplings that are planted have to be inoculated with the spores of the truffle," Patrick says.
"Then you wait, and you're essentially waiting for a mycelium network to establish, and it creates a sort of mat. After five or six year, you can look out the window and think, 'well what's happening?'
"It's not like an orchard where you can see your fruit growing, but you can see some crowning starting to take place where the truffles start to emerge."
Robertson Truffles is the oldest truffiere on the Australian mainland, and still holds the honour - from 2014 - of growing Australia's largest Black Perigord truffle.
This year, after good rain but also enough sun and regular frosts, the Moroneys have plenty to harvest.
How to hunt for truffles
Next we properly meet the dogs, and learn how they're trained to sniff out the scent of truffles under the guidance of owner Marilyn McKenzie, a friend of the Moroney's who happens to be one of the country's best detection dog trainers.
Then it's into the trees, following behind Marilyn and Seal, with bright blue shoe covers over our boots to stop any possible transfer of other fungi that could wipe-out the truffles in the completely organic farm.
Seal gets to work, sniffing around methodically and then dropping down with her nose to the ground as she finds her first truffle within seconds.
It's poking up through the earth, and Tanya places a black mat down to protect our knees from the moist soil and urges someone to come in and take a big sniff.
"I won't let you go until you've got a nice brown mark on your nose," she says.
The reason is that, once a truffle is even partially dug out, it can't be left because it won't mature, so you want to make sure that they're all perfectly ready to be harvested.
Satisfied with the aroma, Tanya produces some "high tech" digging implements - a butter knife and a spoon - to help us carefully loosen the soil around the truffle.
Andrew and Cindy Buckingham, foodies who run Buck's Cafe in Wollongong, are among those who have come along for the day.
"We've been trying to do this for a while - we're just foodies and I'm a baker by trade so we just wanted to come and have this experience," Andrew says.
"I've never had a real truffle before, so this is really quite an amazing experience," Cindy says, as the truffle she's been digging around finally comes loose from the earth.
Seal, meanwhile, has already found plenty of other truffles. Some of them are rotting, but most have that rich mushroom scent, and we all get to work digging out our own truffle.
Marilyn continues around the truffiere, swapping Seal for Twiggy and planting little flags around wherever there are truffles, so Tanya and Patrick can come back to check their aroma later to fill their commercial orders.
Last year, they supplied to a number of Illawarra restaurants including Kneading Ruby, Santino and Mia Mia.
"I doesn't matter if it's got nodules or it's perfectly round, a chef wants the perfect aroma," Patrick says.
"Once it's harvested, a truffle is good for two weeks - that's it. They start to lose their aroma within 24 hours - they can sweat anything up to a gram a day."
This means that it's difficult to preserve truffles - the Moroneys both visibly screw their noses up at the idea of truffle oil, which is almost always synthetic - but they've had success making whipped truffle butter, which they sell, because of the way the scent interacts with animals fat.
When we've finally all had a go at unearthing a truffle, it's time to head back, wash the dirt from our fingernails and get a taste of the treasured harvest.
There's mushrooms, cheese, soup, fresh sourdough with truffle butter and plenty of other truffle infused treats to try.
"I love truffle butter in some popcorn, or on a cheese and ham sandwich," Patrick says.
"Or even just a brie cheese sandwiched and oven-roasted. I love fresh truffle with scrambled eggs, or on roast chicken - so you take some fresh truffle and shave it and pop it under the skin and the flavour will ooze through the meat as its cooking.
"It wants simple things: pasta, risotto, honey - you can't go past it."