You’ve probably heard of dogs trained to detect explosives, but did you know dogs can also detect Potato virus Y? Nose Knows Scouting owner Andrea Parish and her Labrador, Zora, are working with North Dakota State University potato breeder Susie Thompson to sniff out PVY in seed potatoes. Thompson says it’s an important job. “We have set restrictions or percentages we can’t exceed when we’re producing seed potatoes. The newer strains of this virus are difficult to detect with our eyes.” Nose Knows Scouting started three years ago when Parish asked her husband, a potato breeder and consultant, a simple question. “Who on the farm is using dogs to detect disease? The answer was no one. That was crazy to me.” Parish got her dog training certification, trained the pups and started traveling across the country during the COVID pandemic, meeting with companies and farms to do PVY testing. In the fall, a potato seed certification researcher at Montana State University is starting a two-year research study to check the accuracy of the dog’s findings. Hear the story.