From The Zoologist: A Monthly Journal of Natural History (January 1894):
Mr. S. J. Hurley, of Killaloe [in County Clare, Ireland], who has had many tame Otters, wrote in Sept. 1889: —
“You may take my word for it that Otters, when hard pressed for food, do hunt and kill Water-hens [moorhens], and, indeed, other species of water-fowl as well. On one occasion I even caught an Otter in the act of killing a goose. I had been out one morning fishing iu a tributary of the Shannon, and as 1 turned a somewhat sharp bend in the river, I found Madame Lutra tearing the feathers off a goose which she had just killed. I have kept tame Otters for many years past, so know something about them. One beauty that I had used to hunt everything she met with, both on land and in water—fish, feather, and fur. One day, in winter, we were going after the Snipe in the marsh, where it was impossible to work without a retriever. My favourite Irish water spaniel being laid up at home at the time, I could not bring her, but thought I would give Loo (the Otter) a chance of signalising herself. I took her to the marsh, and no spaniel iu the world could have performed better. She put up the Snipe splendidly, and retrieved any birds that fell into the big pools or bog-holes” (pg. 5).
This account is rather interesting because the otter has not always had such a good name among the sporting enthusiasts of Europe.
Otters have traditionally been regarded as pests to game and market fish stocks in Europe, and as a result, they have been relentlessly persecuted. The fact that otters occasionally take birds also meant that they were very often the target of the gamekeeper’s gun or the quarry of his hounds. Even when otter hunting with packs of otterhounds became a sporting gentlemen’s hobby, it was primarily about pest control and only secondarily about sport.
The otter is not a creature that many Europeans actually liked well enough to bring into the home.
But this is the first account I’ve encountered of an otter doing the work of a retriever.
It must have never been a very common request of any otter; otherwise, the retriever would always be playing second fiddle to the true “water dog.” If otters had regularly been used to retrieve waterfowl, the retriever likely never would have developed.
Of course both would be put out of business if humans had figured out how to domesticate the leopard seal, which has been proven to be a fine penguin retriever.
