Fall in love with these truffle-hunting rescue dogs.
Meet Jayson Mesman of Canberra, Australia.
All photos from Jayson Mesman/The Truffle Farm, used with permission.
In addition to looking eerily similar to Chris Pratt, Jayson also adopts rescue dogs and trains them to hunt for truffles.
GIF from "Parks & Recreation."
Before he happened upon this brilliantly adorable idea, Jayson worked as a trainer for law enforcement dogs. But he eventually fell in love with truffles (which, who can blame him?) and now runs the only truffle farm in the Australian Capital Territory.
Truffles are famously rare, famously difficult to cultivate, famously delicious, and above all, famously expensive. This year's harvest is expected to run between $2,000 and $3,000 per kilogram.
The flavorful funguses are found in the soil around certain trees like hickory and oak and can only be detected by their smell. While pigs have a natural ability to sniff out the scrumptious scent of truffles, they also tend to eat them, which has led some farmers to train dogs for the task instead.
As a lifelong dog enthusiast, Jayson took this one step further: He recruited a legion of eager pups to help him in the truffle hunt — all adopted from nearby pounds.
"I actually go into the pound and look for the dogs that people quite often can't maintain," Jayson said. "Those with a really strong hunt drive, wanting to play constantly, the dog that chases the ball until he falls over almost."
"Owners are grabbing the cute, cuddly Labradors that everyone sees on the Kleenex ads," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "They don't realise they're a natural born retriever, so really high-powered ... and they don't realise that until their nice manicured backyard gets ripped to pieces."
Jayson went on to explain that he uses positive reinforcement to train the pups to hunt truffles, noting that technique "can get a dog to do basically anything you want them to do." He said he tries to rescue as many dogs as he can.
So how do you train a rescue dog to sniff out this sweet truffle goodness? The trick is figuring out what each one wants.
"These dogs don't consider it work; it's not a chore by any sense," Jayson said. "The key is making sure they're having a good time."
Most of his canine crew would respond to standard treats or praise, and Jayson only had to figure out the rewards they liked best. But for some of them, the process was a little more tricky.
Take Simba, for instance.
Jayson had exhausted his usual tricks of toys and food in trying to train Simba, and he was all out of ideas. But Simba finally found his first truffle, and right after, Mesman's partner, Danielle, gave the dog a hug.
This elite squad of truffle pups is rounded out by Willow...
...Nala...
...Samson...
...and Max, Jayson's personal kelpie that recently started joining in on the truffle hunt action.
"He's a dog that can run 80 to 100 kilometres per day," he said. "So we put all that energy to use, and it's something that he loves doing."
But this rowdy crew couldn't do what they do without Winnie and Piglet, the truffle pigs.
These two saddlebacks rely on their innately attuned noses to dig up any unformed or rotten truffles at the end of the season, which they eat up and poop out — spreading the spores back into the soil to make next year's harvest even more robust.
Thank you, Jayson, for making a difference in the lives of these wonderful animals. (And also for supplying people with tasty, tasty truffle treats.)
The next time you're in Australia, you can visit Jayson and his canine crew at The Truffle Farm Canberra. The internationally-renowned gourmet experience is just an added bonus. And yes — you can go hunting with the dogs, too.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.