Dachshund Spend ten minutes watching two dachshund owners work with their dogs and the difference shows up almost immediately. Not in the dogs. In the humans.
The people who struggle tend to treat a dachshund like a Labrador with short legs. The people who don’t have quietly accepted something important: this breed was built to go underground, alone, and make decisions without asking permission from anyone.
That trait gets labeled stubbornness. It’s actually a job description, and it doesn’t switch off just because you’re standing in your kitchen holding a treat.
Almost every training headache traces back to a handful of habits that are completely fixable. Here are the twelve that cause the most damage.
1. Reading Independence as Defiance
Your dachshund heard you. He simply ran a quick cost benefit analysis and decided the couch was winning.
Owners who get frustrated here start repeating themselves louder, which teaches the dog that cues are background noise. Owners who succeed change the math instead, making compliance more interesting than the alternative.
A dachshund doesn’t ask what do you want. He asks what’s in it for me, and he expects a real answer.
Once you stop taking it personally, training gets dramatically easier.
2. Running Sessions Way Too Long
Fifteen minute training blocks feel productive to us. To a dachshund, minute nine is when the whole thing stops being a game.
Three to five minutes is plenty. Two or three of those scattered through the day will beat one long session every single time.
Stop while your dog still wants more. That leftover enthusiasm is what you’re banking for tomorrow.
3. Paying in Kibble
Dry kibble is a paycheck. Freeze dried liver is a bonus with a handwritten note attached.
Match the Reward to the Difficulty
Sitting in a quiet living room? Low value treat is fine. Coming when called while a squirrel is mid escape? That earns the good stuff, no negotiation.
Plenty of owners burn out their recall by paying the same rate for easy work and hard work. Your dachshund notices the discrepancy long before you do.
4. Repeating the Cue Five Times
Sit. Sit. Sit sit sit. Sit!
Congratulations, the cue is now "sit" said five times with rising panic, and that’s the version your dog will wait for.
Say it once. Wait. If nothing happens, reset the situation and make it easier rather than louder.
5. Expecting Fast Housetraining
Dachshunds are famously slow to house train, and it has very little to do with intelligence. Small bladders, low ground clearance, and a strong dislike of wet grass all conspire against you.
Weather Is a Real Variable
Rain, frost, and dewy lawns will stall progress in a way most owners never anticipate. A covered potty area or a patch of artificial turf solves more accidents than another six weeks of scolding ever will.
Assume nine to twelve months of consistency. Anything faster is a gift.
6. Laughing at the Behavior You’ll Hate Later
A six pound puppy standing on his hind legs and barking at the mailman is objectively adorable.
A grown dachshund doing the same thing at 6am, every morning, for eight years, is a different experience entirely.
Whatever you reinforce now becomes the adult dog’s default. Cute is not the same as acceptable, and the gap between those two things closes fast.
7. Training Through Leash Pressure on the Neck
This one matters more for dachshunds than almost any other breed. That long spine and those compressed discs do not tolerate yanking, and neck collars concentrate force in exactly the wrong place.
Use a Y shaped harness. Always.
Back health is not a separate topic from training. Every leash correction you skip is a disc you didn’t gamble with.
Loose leash walking taught with rewards and direction changes accomplishes everything a correction would, minus the risk.
8. Waiting Until the Vaccinations Are Finished to Socialize
The critical socialization window closes around sixteen weeks. Waiting until week eighteen means you missed it.
Safe Exposure Still Counts
Carry your puppy through a hardware store. Sit on a bench near a school at pickup time. Invite calm, vaccinated adult dogs over.
Dachshunds that skip this stage frequently grow into adults who bark at everything with legs, and undoing that takes considerably longer than preventing it would have.
9. Household Rules That Change by Person
Dad allows the bed. Mom doesn’t. The teenager feeds table scraps when nobody’s looking.
Your dachshund is not confused by this. He’s simply learned to run a different program for each human, and he’s very good at it.
Sit down as a household and agree on the actual rules. Write them on the fridge if you have to, because inconsistency reads as opportunity to a dog this clever.
10. Punishing the Bark Instead of Addressing the Reason
Dachshunds were bred to bark underground so hunters could locate them. The volume is not a defect; it’s the feature you signed up for.
Yelling at a barking dachshund often sounds like enthusiastic backup to the dog.
Find the Trigger First
Boredom barking, alert barking, and anxiety barking all look identical and respond to completely different fixes. Teaching a solid "quiet" cue works, but only after you’ve figured out which one you’re dealing with.
11. Trusting Off Leash Recall Too Early
Scent hounds follow their noses, and a dachshund on a trail is a dog with a purpose that no longer includes you.
Recall that works in the backyard means almost nothing in a field. Proof it gradually with a long line, in progressively harder places, over months rather than weeks.
The recall you have is only as strong as the most distracting place you’ve tested it.
Plenty of owners learn this the hard way, usually while sprinting across a park in slippers.
12. Quitting Right Before It Clicks
Dachshund training tends to look flat for a while and then jump. Week after week of apparent nothing, and then suddenly the behavior is just there.
Owners who bail during the flat stretch conclude the breed can’t be trained. Owners who keep the sessions short and the rewards good get to see the other side of it, and it’s genuinely impressive.
Track Something Small
Log how many correct responses you get out of ten attempts. Progress that feels invisible day to day becomes obvious on paper, and it’ll keep you going through the boring middle stretch.
Ten out of ten in the kitchen means you’re ready for the hallway. Ten in the hallway means you’re ready for the yard.
That’s the whole system, really: small wins, stacked in order, with a dog who has to be convinced rather than commanded.