THE DACHSHUND: neatly packaged affection
His business in life is to dig out badgers*, dachs being the German for badger, and dig he does, busily, even where there are no badgers. He will scrabble holes in the lawn and the flowerbeds, regardless of the gardener’s feelings. His short front legs are as well adapted to such an occupation as his long nose to probe and snuffle. When not engaged
on this mischief, he sits with his fat paws turned out in what dancing masters call the first position, for above all things he is neat and smooth and tidy.
He is a headstrong little dog, full of character. It is rather unfair on him that he should be regarded as a comic – the sausage dog, described in Punch as the kind of dog that is sold by the yard. His appearance may be on the comic side, lending itself to the caricaturists, but his personality is very much his own; and most idiosyncratic. No two dachshunds are quite alike. He is an amusing mixture of independence and dependence – out on his dig for the best part of the afternoon, and then coming in to demand affection in front of the teatime fire. For, like most Germans, he has his sentimental, cosy, bourgeois side. I do not know whether the trait is common to all dachshunds, but the only two I have observed both entertained a deep devotion for another much larger dog, in one case a yellow Labrador, in the other case a black Pinscher.
One has known dogs enjoying each other’s company – it is much more fun, for instance, to hunt in couples than alone – but love which pines in separation is something more rare. These two small dachshunds both insist on sleeping in the arms of their big protectors, a sensible arrangement for the pair in chilly England; less so for the other two, whose home is in tropical Brazil. I should have thought it much too hot.
There are three types of coat: the smooth, the long-haired, and the wirehaired, and these three are repeated in the miniature version called by the Germans
Kaninchenteckel, or rabbit dachshunds. I must say that the smooth-haired miniature reminds me more of a rat than of a rabbit; the late Major Lawrence Johnston of gardening fame had quite a pack of them, skinny little things with whiplash tails, wriggling in and out between one’s ankles. I can imagine that it would be a nice dog to carry in a muff, if muffs were still in fashion: its tail would stick out at one end and its nose at the other, and its solid little body would be warm to the hands inside. *Dachshunds were bred in 17th-century Germany to hunt badgers, but we adamantly favour their 21st-century role as beloved pets.