About Dachshund Dog Breed:

Dachshund dogs are great pets. They tend to bond with one or two people, so they always want to cuddle; they follow you from room to room. They always want to be wherever you are. And, they’re funny; they do strange things. They’re like little clowns. – Living with dachshunds is fun. They’re very affectionate. They have a lot of energy, so if you’re one that likes to go hiking, running, walking, these are your go-to dogs.

They are like fries, and you can’t just have one. They’re all very different personalities. But they’re very enduring, very loyal, and very affectionate.

In parks where there are squirrels, And they love treeing squirrels. We’ve never trained them actually to alert us that they’ve treed a squirrel. But as good hounds that they are they’ll tree a squirrel, they’ll sit, and howl and they’ll bark until we get there. And then they’ll run circles around it to let us know that they’ve done something right. And we’ll try to pull them away, and they will find another squirrel. They’re just that tenacious. They’ll see crows, they’ll see birds, and they’ll want to get them. And their ears perk up, and their tails go high, their little paw comes up. It’s almost Pointer-like, but not really. They don’t point. They just put their paw up, and they know that they’re ready to do stuff like that. They were bred to hunt and to track.

If you hide treats, and then one by one, they go out and find those treats. And they go around sniffing every part of the apartment until they find all the treats they’re supposed to find.

Dachshund Temperament:

The temperaments are slightly different in the different varieties. Probably the wire coated ones are the most extrovert, and long-coated ones are probably more laid back and the smooth a bit more of a one person or one family dog. So a little bit more independent perhaps.

Dachshund History:

Dachshunds are considered hounds. They’re short-legged hounds. And the first time they were recorded was in medieval times. The first time it was used, the term dachshund, was in Germany around the 1500s, which Dachshund means badger hound; Dachs being the German word for badger, and hund being the word for a hound.

They were standard dachshunds, so they were a little bit bigger. There are two sizes of dachshunds, so there are the standard and the miniature. Standard dachshunds are the size of European badgers. And badgers are pretty fierce animals. So the dachshunds were bred to be fierce just like the prey they were hunting. I know that the first dogs that were bred were smooth-haired dachshunds. And it is believed they were bred down from Bassett Hounds. And then afterward came the wire-haired dachshunds that were mixed into terrier dogs to get that wire coat. And so you have dogs that are hounds but also terriers in a way. And then you also have the long-hairs that came closer to the 1900s, I believe, that were bred with spaniels to get the long coat.

In Europe, there are three sizes, which would be a rabbit-sized dachshund, And the standards used for hunting badgers, track deer, and track boar. They were pack animals, kind of like beagles. So they’d send them out in packs, and they’d go out hunting. The reason why they’re so long, they wanted them to fit into the burrows of the badgers to take them out of there. And it makes them very tenacious and very brash to the point of, they’re completely sometimes, they don’t care how crazy it is. They’ll go against anything. later on, they were bred down to miniature size to hunt rabbits, vermin, and things like that.

Dachshund Size:

• Standard Dachshund:

          height 8 – 11 inches (20 – 27cm)

• Toy dachshund:

          height up to 12 inches (30cm)

• Miniature Dachshund:

          height up to 5 – 7 inches (13 – 18cm)

• Tweenie Dachshund:

          11 – 16 pounds.

In the standard, the AKC and the FCI, which is the European, I guess, continental registration of animals, of dogs, standard dachshunds are considered to be 16 to 32 pounds. Miniatures considered 8 to 11 pounds, and then rabbit-sized is anything up to 10 pounds.

Dachshund Colors:

The Dachshund dog comes in a wide variety of colors that are black, black & tan, chocolate & cream, blue & tan, chocolate & tan, cream, red and tan.

Home Requirements:

They don’t need so much space. Houses that have yards, they run around, they get tired, they come back inside. And they retreat to the couch. So that’s where they like to be; on the couch, on your bed, anywhere with you.

• Well, I think that they don’t need a lot of space. But they must get adequate exercise.

Dachshund Grooming:

You need to groom at least once a week. The wire coats have to be hand stripped. If you need to hand strip a wire, you need to be aware of how to do it or take the dog to a proper grooming parlor. Typically three or four times a year their wire coats would need to be hand stripped. The longs – obviously they need to be more careful about not allowing the coats to get tangled, and the smooth only need a polish with a bristle brush.

Dachshund Coat Types:

So we have the smooth-haired which is the classic one that everybody recognizes as the sausage dog if you like, we have the long-haired coat which is more like something like an Irish Setter type coat, and then the wire-haired which is more like a terrier coat.

Exercise Needs:

We do take our Dachshund on walks daily, preferably at around 6:00, 7:00 p.m. when we get home from work. During the day, they sleep and roam around. They don’t get into much, thankfully. But aside from that, they’re pretty much home all day inside. And then, as I said, we’ll take them on walks or if activities are going on, like dachshunds activities, like wiener races. So, that’s pretty much our daily go-to. We do not take them to any AKC field trials or anything like that.

• Dachshunds love to run. It’s just so much fun to watch the dogs go and race and be a part of the community.

Health Problems:

For the dachshund breed, one of the main health concerns is IVDD, which is Intervertebral Disk Disease, which means that they can hurt their spine. So if they fracture it, it can disconnect, and they’ll become paralyzed.

Note:

• Do not let them jump on and off the bed, Couches, we can’t prevent that because, as I’ve mentioned, it’s hard for them to realize what they’re doing is wrong and right.

• They love to eat. So trying to keep the dogs separate during the eating time because this dog will dive into the other dogs’ food. And they’re not big eaters. So we have to separate them at mealtime.

• When people come over, we have the rule that they don’t approach the dogs too quickly. Specifically, I’ve noticed with my long-hairs and other people’s long-hairs, is they’re a little shy and timid at first once someone has entered the apartment. They’ll bark at them outside. But once they’ve come in, they are a little shy. And so you coming too strong scares them, and then they don’t trust you.

• Do not let anyone pick them up because most people don’t know how to pick up a dachshund. You don’t just pick it up like a regular dog since they have a long back. Just picking them up from their front legs or the upper portion of their body puts a lot of pressure and a lot of strains on their backs, which again, may bleed into that IVDD precautionary kind of situation.

• The only precaution is with maybe bigger dogs. Dachshunds are pretty brave, so they’re not scared of other dogs. But something like a Husky or something very active might hurt them if they’re playing. I mean, the Dachshund won’t back down. But, for example, my parents have a Rat Terrier, and he’s not any bigger than they are. But he hurts them a lot because he’s just bouncing off the walls, pulls their ears, pulls their tail. And they don’t like it, and they’re just a lot lower to the ground; a lot longer. He pushes them, and they fall over, and you have to be careful with them because again, their back, it’s a pretty serious issue.

• Something else for dachshunds that is well, for the long-hairs, they have long coats. But anything too hot or too cold can be, especially for the short-hairs, can be pretty harmful to them.

• In some cases like that, they’ll have to use little wheelchairs or little wheels that they’ll use. But in our house, my friend built us a ramp. So he made it so he could put his shoes in there and it’s just a basic wood ramp. And they climb up and down the bed. Since our bed is pretty high, I’m not sure exactly the height, but it’s like this big, this high. And they can easily break their backs off of it. And they have fallen off, but luckily they’ve been okay. But it’s essential to have a ramp or maybe train them to not jump on and off the furniture because they can hurt themselves. They don’t realize that they have this sort of genetic disadvantage for themselves. So they don’t understand that jumping off the couch or jumping off the bed is wrong.

• Just check your breed lines when you’re thinking about buying a puppy. There has been some aggression in some lines, and it’s come from the fearfulness. So you want to be thinking about checking out your breeder and making sure that you’ve seen the parents and that there’s no fearfulness in that breed line.

Frequent Asked Questions:

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