Reading more about the owlbears, they pair bound. Where is the missing male, I wonder?
Oh
"Owlbear musk was extracted from hormonal males in mating season. It was so potent that one whiff was enough to free a creature of enchantments that dazed, stunned, or dominated the mind. A typical pouch contained enough for three uses, weighed 1 pound (450 grams), and was valued at 500 gp. Centaurs were especially skilled in trapping these owlbears and quickly extracting the musk glands.[18]"
Hard to domesticate even temporarily, but...
"A rare few individuals were 'owlbear whisperers', who could somehow placate an owlbear and even persuade it to follow them as a companion or guardian, at least so long as it was fed.[82]"
Is it going to eat the dog
"If ordered not to attack, they could well ignore their master and attack anyway.[19"
Okay, not everyone hates them
"Owlbears found in ruins or dungeons had most likely been placed there as guardians.[6] Gray orc tribes kept such creatures as owlbears as tribal guardians.[83]"
"Elven treetop communities could sometimes encouraged owlbears to lair under their homes, so that they served as a defense at night. Hobgoblins might employ them as war beasts and hill giants and frost giants would have them as pets. In some frontier lands, owlbears might be trained for racing, with bets made on both which would win and which would savage its handler."
NPC magic???
"
A druid circa 1479 DR with a primal aspect could adopt the semblance of an owlbear for their wild shape, as they could many other creatures, though this was no true transformation.[88] Prior to that, after the Year of Wild Magic, 1372 DR, a druid could not wild shape into an owlbear, it being a magical beast rather than a thing of nature.[89][90] Incarnum-using totemists could bind an owlbear avatar to their arms to gain their grappling power.[91]
An owlbear could be summoned with the monster summoning IV spell[92][93] or summon nature's ally V.[94] One could summon an undead owlbear skeleton with summon undead II.[95][96]
With the find minion spell, a wizard could have a loyal owlbear minion. It would not fight to the death, unless commanded or to protect its master. They would not lay eggs, but would hibernate in winter if the climate called for it. Uniquely, an owlbear minion could transform into a regular bear or giant owl once a day for a couple of hours. The wizard master grew a crest of yellow-brown hair not unlike an owlbear's.[97]"
Oh^2
"How the owlbear came to be was a long-running argument among scholars. The mostly widely held theory was of course that the first owlbear was the product of a demented mage crossing a bear and a giant owl.[8][6][4][1] The goal was likely to combine the bear's strength, stamina, and claws and the owl's keen senses, but the experiment was likely a failure, given how bad-tempered and untrainable it would've been.[122] In any case, the mage was most likely killed by it too.[6] Some accounts rejected this notion, but still could not explain them.[3] The oldest elves recalled that owlbears had been around for many millennia and a few fey claimed owlbears had always been found in the Feywild.[1]
In the wake of the Time of Troubles, a new theory was put forward that such creatures as owlbears and perytons were abominations created in past godswars that survived and bred true.[123] In fact, on Toril, at least, owlbears were brought into being by one of the creator races,[124] most likely the aearee."
