More than anyone wants to know about floatplanes.
You may have been closer than you realize. The land-based Otter has fixed landing gear. (On the landing checklist, pilots sometimes say “down and welded”; we’re such cutups.) But some “pontoons” (in the biz, they’re called floats) can operate on land or water (called “amphibious”, or just “amphib”) and the wheels on those are retractable. Wheels down for land, up for water, and do not get them mixed up.
Floats also have water rudders that extend and retract. (See this page, scroll down to the diagram and the picture.) Water rudders are down for low-speed maneuvering on water, and up at all other times for less drag and less chance of damaging them.
Where I worked, we put the water rudder control on the floor between the two front seats; raising, lowering and steering was by cables. Raising and lowering the wheels was by hydraulics, with the control on the floor or on the panel. There’s no easy way to run a steering linkage to the wheels, so slow-speed steering on the ground was done by braking one side or the other.
If anyone has ever driven a car with one tire going down, you know what it feels like to hold the wheel in place when it wants to turn. Planes are like that, but moreso. When you’re climbing away from an airport, it’s a lot easier to crank in some nose-up trim than to pull the yoke back and hold it for a few minutes.
But, I had one flying lesson that I’ll never forget. We had the plane trimmed to fly straight-and-level at 80 mph, with the hands off the controls. My instructor had me pull the throttle back. Instead of slowing down, the plane started to descend, still going 80 mph. Push the throttle in, and we leveled off. Push it in a little more, and we started to climb; all while going at 80 mph and not touching anything else.
The interaction of power, yoke, and trim is a litttle more complicated than it seems at first.