In the right hands and with the right amount of early socialisation and training, Otterhounds are quite easy to train. However, like many other hounds, they are known to be sensitive dogs by nature and as such they do not answer well to any sort of harsh correction or heavy handed training methods. They do, however, respond well to voice and positive reinforcement. With this said, their training has to be consistent and always fair in order to get the best results.
Otterhounds have a real sense of humour and are known as natural clowns which although highly amusing, it can make keeping them focused on their training a little bit of a challenge which is just one of the reasons they are not a good choice for novice owners. However, even the best trained Otterhound might choose to ignore a recall command if they pick up a more interesting scent and as such care has to be taken as to where a dog is allowed to run off the lead.
