Britain's rarest native hound, described while its packs were still in the water.
The Otterhound - A Dog Anthology reprints the breed chapters from four Victorian and Edwardian kennel works, among them Vero Shaw's The Illustrated Book of the Dog, James Watson's The Dog Book (1906), W. D. Drury's British Dogs and Rawdon B. Lee's Modern Dogs (Sporting Division), with Arthur Wardle's drawings and the original photographs reproduced.
Rough-coated, web-footed and deep-voiced, the hound was hunting river otter in England when the sport was already centuries old, and the modern type was fixed in the north-west in the early 1800s. Otter hunting ended in 1978, and the Kennel Club now lists the breed as a Vulnerable Native Breed with only a few hundred alive worldwide - which makes this record of its working prime worth having.
This edition features:
- The breed chapters from four landmark Victorian and Edwardian kennel works
- Arthur Wardle's drawings and period photographs, reproduced from the original volumes
- Points, temperament and water-work, with the histories of the great packs
- A record of a Vulnerable Native Breed as it was when its packs still hunted