El guapérrimo Rocco es un cocker spaniel con un trabajo muy especial e importante: él se encarga de olfatear las barricas donde el whisky de William Grant & Sons se va madurando para detectar, a tiempo, cualquier problema. Así se garantiza, en parte, la calidad posterior de esta preciada bebida alcohólica. Es la primera vez que un perro es entrenado para esta labor, aunque sí existen canes que trabajan en bodegas de vino pero su trabajo es ligeramente distinto.
Como la madera es un material natural y la destilación del whisky es un proceso orgánico, explican desde la destilería, el control de calidad implica detectar cualquier imperfección en esas barricas que pudiera afectar a la calidad del whisky.
Y dado que el sentido del olfato de un can como Rocco es 40 veces más potente que el de un humano, él ha sido entrenado durante seis meses para poder, justamente, alertar ante cualquier posible problema.
El educador Stuart Phillips de BWY Canine, especialista en entrenamiento de perros detectores, fue el encargado de enseñar al can a concentrarse en identificar aromas específicos en la madera (¡¡aunque entre medias Rocco eligiera comerse algún que otro calcetín!!) y a saber cómo comunicar a sus compañeros humanos cuando detectaba algún problema.
Ask anyone who has a dog or several, there’s always a lot of worry. This morning Rocco didn’t seem himself, until...
Posted by B.W.Y Canine Ltd on Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Aquí podéis ver parte del entrenamiento:
Rocco & Bran Searching BenchesAnother day and more testing with our two project dogs, Rocco and Bran. Today they’ve had to search some benches in a very open area with high winds. The odour impregnated filter paper was placed out 10 minutes prior to the first dog searching. The filter paper has had 1 hour impregnation time with the target odour and after 10 minutes soak time, the odour would be starting to decline in strength. Added to that the strong wind, this is quite a challenging search for the two dogs. Again, we’re not particularly bothered about the indication, our focus is to get both dogs searching and searching well for a small odour.
Posted by B.W.Y Canine Ltd on Thursday, November 19, 2020
Rocco on CasksA cracking slow motion video of Rocco, being put through his paces on the detection dog trials we are assisting with. During the course of Thursday last week, Rocco and Bran performed this exercise many many times, with the target cask position being moved. As well as performing this odour identification test, both Rocco and Bran were required to perform searches of up to 20 minutes in length, searching hundreds of empty casks with nothing to find. This is real world testing for a specific job. No astro turf, no bricks, no polished indication for social media viewers. Both Rocco and Bran have a very important job to perform and have been training and working in busy environments with lots of noise, movement, vehicle traffic, dust and other variables to contend with. Training these dogs is and has been hard work. These dogs are being trained to find odours undetectable to the human nose. Training and working in the real world.
Posted by B.W.Y Canine Ltd on Sunday, April 18, 2021
Rocco tiene un trabajo bien delicado pero, por suerte, también ejerce de perro feliz y por eso mismo su presencia tiene efectos secundarios en la distilería de William Grant & Sons donde logra levantarle el ánimo a todos sus compañeros. ¡Normal!
Podéis ver a Rocco en acción aquí.
Rocco, featuring on BBC Breakfast this morning. One of two dogs trained by us and the only two dogs in the world to do this special job for a Scottish whisky maker.
— B.W.Y Canine Ltd (@BWYK9) May 29, 2021
Not bad work for a small #Pembrokeshire business. #Wales 🏴 @AndreaByrneTV @Ruth_ITV @JonathanITV pic.twitter.com/HfwHN4Nnxw
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