Dachshund
- Group
- Hound
- Size
- Standard 16–32 lb, ~8–9 in at shoulder (Miniature is 11 lb and under — see our Mini Dachshund page)
- Temperament
- Clever, bold, stubborn, devoted, vocal
- Life expectancy
- 12–16 years
- Coat
- Three types — smooth, longhaired, wirehaired
- Colors
- Red, black & tan, cream, chocolate, dapple, piebald, brindle
- AKC recognized
- Yes — breed standard written 1879; first AKC registration 1885
- Origin
- Germany — bred to hunt badgers underground ("Dachs" = badger, "Hund" = dog)
Is a Dachshund right for you?
Charming, characterful, and built around one serious structural caveat that has to come first, before temperament or grooming or anything else.
The back. That long spine is the breed's defining vulnerability. The DachsLife 2015 study of the breed found roughly 19–24% of Dachshunds show clinical signs of intervertebral disc disease (IVDD) in their lifetime — with the Standard Smooth-Haired variety hit hardest of all the coat types, at nearly a quarter of dogs affected. A single bad jump off a sofa can herniate a disc. The household has to adapt for life: ramps instead of jumps, stairs minimized, careful lifting that supports chest and rear together, and strict weight control, since every extra ounce loads that same spine. This is the one fact about the breed that matters more than any other.
Digging and prey drive. Bred to go to ground after a badger, a Dachshund left to its own devices will excavate your flowerbeds with real professional focus. A securely fenced yard and an outlet for that instinct — a dig pit, scent-work games — save the landscaping.
Stubbornness. Dachshunds are clever and self-directed; they learn a command, then visibly weigh whether obeying it serves their interests today. Housetraining is famously slow. Patient, reward-based, consistent training wins; battles of will do not.
Voice. A Dachshund's bay carries. Apartment neighbors will know when something interesting has happened.
Coat upkeep. The lowest-maintenance of the three is the smooth coat — an occasional wipe-down covers it. Longhaired Dachshunds need regular brushing to keep the feathering from matting, and wirehaired ones need hand-stripping a couple of times a year to keep the coat's texture correct, which most owners outsource to a groomer who knows the breed.
Small-dog dental and weight concerns. Like most small breeds, Dachshunds are prone to dental crowding and tartar buildup — regular brushing or dental chews matter — and because obesity is one of the single biggest controllable risk factors for triggering a back injury, keeping a Dachshund lean is not a cosmetic choice but a genuine spinal-health measure.
The verdict: a devoted, genuinely funny, surprisingly tough little hound for an owner willing to protect that back for sixteen years and let the stubborn streak be a personality trait rather than a flaw.
Famous Dachshunds
The Dachshund has the unusual distinction of being an Olympic mascot. Waldi, designed for the 1972 Munich Games by Otl Aicher, was the first official mascot in Olympic history — chosen, organizers said, because the breed's resistance, tenacity, and agility matched what an athlete needed. Munich's marathon route was even plotted, reportedly, to trace Waldi's own outline: start at the "neck," loop through the "body," finish at the "tail."
The shape itself has been famous on its own terms for longer. Pixar's "Toy Story" gave the toy box its own Dachshund in Slinky Dog, whose stretchable metal-coil midsection is a sight gag that only works because the breed's actual silhouette already looks like nature's version of the toy. And a century before that, the Dachshund's very German-ness briefly made it a liability: during the First World War, American owners floated "liberty pup" as a patriotic replacement name for their dogs, rather than abandon a breed anti-German sentiment had turned suspicious. The nickname never stuck. The dogs, mercifully, outlasted it, and the breed's popularity recovered fully well before the century was out — proof, if any were needed, that a good dog eventually wins the argument regardless of the politics of the moment.
See Dachshunds on the live show
A Standard Dachshund carries real weight behind that low-slung shape — up to thirty-two pounds of genuine hunting hound, not a lapdog scaled down for effect — and it shows the moment one crosses our stage nose-first. This is a scent hound before it is anything else, and a Dachshund that catches an interesting trail across the studio floor will follow it with total, oblivious commitment, audience be damned.
The voice is the other giveaway. Dachshunds don't so much bark as bay — a deep, surprisingly loud, almost hound-dog howl built to carry across a field and down a tunnel, wildly out of proportion to the body producing it. The first time a Dachshund lets one rip mid-broadcast, the chat reliably asks whether a much larger dog has wandered in off-camera.
Then there's the bearing. A Dachshund holds itself like a dog that has never once considered its own size a limitation, because for two centuries of German breed history, it wasn't one. The three coats add their own variety act — a smooth-coated Dachshund moves like a small seal, a longhaired one trails ear feathering that seems designed for slow motion, and a wirehaired one arrives already looking like it has opinions about the weather. Viewers who arrive expecting a novelty leave having watched something closer to a small, extremely confident badger-hunting specialist clock in for work.
One Dachshund has taken our stage
Real dogs from real owners. Click any to see their certificate of appearance.
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