Living in the Sierra foothills of northern California, Egg has built one of the most charming corners of the internet around a simple premise: she takes her border collie lab mix, Noodle, out into the wilderness to sniff for wild mushrooms.
What started as a half-hearted experiment during peak COVID has grown into a devoted following of mushroom enthusiasts, dog lovers, and outdoor adventurers who tune in to watch Noodle work. Egg didn't plan to train a mushroom hunting dog. She didn't even plan to get another dog. But Noodle found her calling, and the internet is a brighter place because of it. Meet Egg + Noodle:
How exactly does a dog hunt mushrooms?
Basically, Noodle sniffs wildly around the woods until she finds one of her trained species. She then notifies me that she found one, and awaits her reward. She notifies me by crouching near the mushroom, and will signal to it with her paw or nose.
Where does one find mushrooms? Not your secret locations of course, but how do you know where to look?
It takes a lot of research, practice, and exploring to figure the spots out. Not only learning the short growing seasons, but also understanding growing habitat. Mainly, understanding which trees the mycorrhizal mushroom species grow in association. Most prized wild mushrooms (porcini, chanterelles, morels, etc) are mycorrhizal, which essentially means they form a symbiotic relationship underground exchanging nutrients with tree roots. So, you will find these mushrooms growing nearby certain tree species. Learning your tree species is a key aspect of mushroom hunting!
How many mushrooms per day or week would you say is your average haul?
This is a hard question to answer, and there is a lot of variation as I'm a hobbyist, not a commercial forager. It ranges anywhere from 5 to 50 pounds a week during peak season!
How did you train Noodle to find the mushrooms?
It sounds over simplified but basically I point to the mushroom, reward, repeat! I didn't use any fancy scentwork techniques and did all my training in the field while hunting.
Were you a forager before Noodle came into your life?
A little bit! I grew up in the Bay Area running around in the hills and spent a lot of time in nature learning native plants. I did forage, but I always grew up with this 'mushrooms are dangerous' mentality, so I didn't know anything about mushrooms. I did know about some basic native plants and berries and things like that, though.
How did Noodle come into your life?
I have an older dog as well, and I was living in the woods in the middle of nowhere. I felt like my older dog was a bit bored, so I wanted to get a foster dog to give her some company. I reached out to so many places, but it was peak COVID and all of the shelters were completely overbooked and at communication capacity.
Eventually one day I got fed up. I was waiting for answers, waiting for responses, and as I was going for a hike, I just said 'I just want a border collie lab mix, and the first one I see I'm taking.' I opened my phone onto my Facebook page, and the first post was 'Last border collie lab mix unwanted litter.' I didn't have any cell phone service to click it or contact them, but I was like, 'All right, that's it. That's happening.'
What was Noodle like when you first got her? Did you think mushroom hunting would be her calling?
I did not have any intention to train her to do this. I didn't have any actual concrete dog training experience. I just liked the breed mix. She was honestly too young to adopt. The mom was only six months old, and they were trying to get the litter out as quickly as possible because the mom was starving. Noodle was only five and a half weeks old when I got her, which is really too young to adopt a puppy.
She was quite whiny, quite needy, but really, really friendly and sweet. The woman I got her from said that Noodle was kind of the dog that stayed back, that wasn't as crazy and all over the place, and I liked that. She was the only black dog. She was a bit of a runt, and nobody really wanted her.
How did the scent training start? How did you know this was going to become a thing?
I really didn't, honestly. I would mushroom hunt a lot, and I would joke about needing the dog to find mushrooms. I kind of half-heartedly tried a couple of times, like 'Hey, check that mushroom out.' She wasn't really interested, but she knew we were doing something.
Eventually I watched a show called Dogs with Jobs, and it kind of shifted my perspective on how to train her. It was about making it more about play than a reward. For a working dog, or a dog with working breed background, I think their play and their work are kind of the same. So I tried to frame it as making this a job and making it fun. When I did that and just made it about play, she figured it out in about 15 minutes. I felt like I saw it just go off in her head. It completely clicked. She was just a natural.
Could you walk us through the training process? Were there any hiccups along the way?
A little bit, but not terribly. The first batch she really figured out quickly. I taught her with morels, specifically with burn morels in wildfire scars where there isn't as much diversity of mushrooms. It was easier for her to pick up because that was the main mushroom type around. Once I repeated it with the first mushroom I found a few times, she was off 200 yards away finding her own.
She did mix them up with a peziza, which is kind of like a cup mushroom, and that took a little while to train out of her. I would just say, 'No, not a mushroom, move on.' Then I trained her in chanterelles up in Mendocino, and that was a little more complicated because that area is just really rich in mushrooms. She was kind of at first like, 'Well, what about this one? Could you reward me for that one?' That took a little longer to figure out.
Once she got the morels and the chanterelles and understood that these are what we are looking for and nothing else, it became really easy to just add another mushroom. We haven't had many hiccups since then.
Why do you think people gravitate towards Noodle?
I think because it's clearly very fun for her. It's easy to frame it as, 'Oh, me and my little servant dog are going mushroom hunting and she's finding them for me.' But it's really not the case. She gets bored when we don't do it. She taps her paws and gets so excited when she finds one. It's super fun for her. I think her excitement is pretty contagious, especially when she's jumping around going crazy after finding one.
Now that noodle is a pro hunter, it seems like you’re collecting a lot of mushrooms. Where do they all go?
Foraging has always been a bit of a part of my outdoor life. Once I started finding mushrooms, it does mess up hiking a little bit for you — every time I go hiking it sort of feels like an opportunity to find mushrooms. I have been trying a little bit more lately to just enjoy going for a walk without making it about mushroom hunting.
As for what I do with the mushrooms, I love cooking. I've actually been in the process of opening a restaurant for the last few years, so that's a big part of my life. Depending on the type of mushroom, there are different ways to preserve them. Right now it's morel and spring king, spring porcini season, so those are great for dehydrating. I dehydrate a ton of those and then cook with them year-round.
How did the mushroom hunting videos start?
I did have a lot of friends telling me people would like to see this. I was living a sort of unique lifestyle — out of the city, living in a town of 150 people, just living in the woods. During COVID, people wanted to see what was going on. I put it off and put it off.
I was posting too many videos of my dog on my main page, and honestly I always thought the whole 'making an Instagram for your dog' thing was never my style. I was like, 'I'm not doing that. I'm not talking in my dog's voice.' It just wasn't me. But eventually I said, 'Okay, I need to put this elsewhere.' So I made a video for my friends who like the dog and for my mushroom friends to see what the dog was doing. I had about 150 followers and didn't really put much effort into it.
Honestly, I was having a horrible day one day, filmed a video of myself drinking a beer and looking for mushrooms in the woods, and that video just really took off. I didn't really intend for it to be a page I was putting that much effort into, but it kind of took off on its own.
What do you hope people take away from your videos?
I certainly hope it gets people outside more. I get a lot of comments like, 'Oh, I want to try this with my dog.' And I think it does depend on the dog, of course, but dogs can really learn anything. I see videos where I'm like, 'That is insane, how did they teach that dog that trick?' And then I remember, well, Noodle has a pretty great talent too.
They really can just learn pretty much anything, especially if they're the type of dog that wants to make you happy and wants to learn and wants to engage.
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Noodle's story is a good reminder that dogs are capable of more than most people give them credit for. The right environment, the right framing, and a little patience can unlock something remarkable. You can follow their adventures on Instagram at @reallygoodnoodle.
