Breed Profiles

I came home to stuffing. Not a little. A blizzard of it, the couch exhaling its insides across the living room like a slow explosion. Biscuit, my Otterhound, was asleep in the middle of the mess with a look of total innocence, paws crossed, as if the couch had simply chosen to fall apart on its own.

People buy Otterhounds because they are ridiculous, and then they discover the ridiculousness has a cost. This is one of the rarest dogs in the world, fewer than a thousand left, and every one of them seems to have made a personal deal with chaos.

Mine was a shaggy black-and-tan mountain of dog, seventy-plus pounds, with the kind of coat that picks up burrs like a magnet picks up iron. The beard dripped. The ears hung to his shoulders. When he shook, the whole room got wet. I loved him with a force I did not see coming.

The nose is the whole point

Otterhounds were built to trail otter into rivers, which tells you two things: the nose is world-class, and the love of water is not a preference, it is a religion. Biscuit could find a treat I had hidden inside a sealed container, inside a cabinet, behind a baby gate. The nose was not a feature. It was the operating system.

One spring the brook behind the house went dry on the surface but kept a trickle under the rocks. He found it. He always found it. He would wade in up to his chest and snort along the bottom, the webbed feet paddling in slow circles, and come up grinning with nothing but his own happiness. The webbing is real, by the way, between the toes, a detail breeders love to mention and owners learn the hard way when the dog climbs into the bathtub uninvited.

The couch did not survive him. Neither did two pairs of shoes, a throw pillow, and the corner of a rug with a particularly interesting fringe. Otterhounds are not mean. They are bored, and boredom for this breed is a demolition permit. He needed a job that used the nose, and a backyard was not it.

I started hiding scent trails in the house, a dab of peanut butter on a cotton ball tucked into a shoe, then sending him to find it. He lit up like a switch had been thrown. The destruction dropped by half in a week. The other half was just him being a clown, and I made my peace with that.

Health-wise, these dogs are a soft spot. The breed carries a high rate of glaucoma and a bleeding disorder called factor VII deficiency that many carry without showing it. A good breeder tests. A careless one sells you a dog with a timer you cannot see. Ask for the paperwork before you fall in love, because you will fall in love, and then the paperwork matters more than ever.

He snored. He drooled. He stole bread off the counter with a reach that defied his height. He greeted every stranger like a long-lost brother, which makes him a terrible guard dog and a wonderful ambassador. The world needs more ambassadors.

The first winter with him, the pond behind the house froze and he stood at the edge and whined, confused that his river had gone solid. I broke a hole with a spade and he stuck his whole head in, came up streaming, and looked at me like I had performed a miracle. The water meant more to him than any toy, any treat, any praise. You could train an Otterhound for an hour and lose him in a puddle in a second.

He aged into a magnificent old clown. The beard went white, the joints slowed, but the greeting never did. Every guest, even the mail carrier he had once declared an enemy, got the same full-body wag and a face full of happy drool. He made peace with the world in a way I have not managed, and I watched him do it and tried to learn.

The coat was a full-time job I did not sign up for. The shag soaked up every puddle and every meal he drooled through, and it dried into a smell no shampoo fully beat. I bought a Force dryer on a friend's advice and learned to use it like a tool, and the undercoat came out in clouds that filled the laundry room. He stood in the stream of warm air like it was a personal weather system, eyes half closed, king of his own small storm.

If you want a tidy, trainable, low-maintenance pet, run. If you want a dog who will make you laugh until the furniture is gone and then look at you like you are the best thing that ever happened, the Otterhound is waiting, and he has probably already found your brook.