Dachshund Tunneling through a mountain and hunting a badger underground have more in common than you might think. Both require a stubborn creature with a plan, a willingness to problem solve in the dark, and absolutely no interest in being told the job is impossible.
That second creature weighs about fifteen pounds and sleeps under your blanket.
Dachshunds were bred to go into a burrow alone, make decisions without human input, and come back out having handled it. That job description created a dog with a genuinely strange brain: independent, calculating, and prone to boredom when nothing interesting is happening.
Which is exactly why the average dachshund who gets a walk and a chew toy is running at maybe forty percent capacity.
The other sixty percent goes toward inventing hobbies. Barking at the mail truck. Excavating the couch cushions. Learning which cabinet holds the treats and how to open it when nobody is looking.
Games redirect that energy. Not tricks, not obedience drills, but actual thinking games that ask your dog to solve something. Here are three that work especially well on the dachshund brain, plus the reasons they work and the ways they usually go sideways.
1. The Muffin Tin Puzzle (Scent Meets Strategy)
Grab a standard muffin tin. Drop a treat into a few of the cups, then cover every single cup with a tennis ball.
That is the whole setup. It costs nothing and it will occupy your dog longer than most toys you have paid actual money for.
Your dachshund now has to figure out which cups are hiding something, then work out how to move a ball that does not want to be moved. This combines scent work with physical problem solving, and scent work is where dachshunds absolutely shine.
Their noses are not decorative. Dachshunds are scent hounds, and the tracking ability that let them follow a badger underground is still fully installed in the dog currently ignoring you from the sofa.
A tired nose beats a tired body. Fifteen minutes of scent work will settle a dachshund more thoroughly than an hour of walking, and it goes much easier on their spine.
Making It Harder Once They Catch On
They will get fast at this. Faster than you expect.
When the muffin tin becomes too easy, stop baiting every cup you covered. Put treats in two cups out of twelve and let them work the whole tray with their nose instead of just flipping balls at random.
You can also switch to a smaller, lighter treat so the scent is fainter. Or swap tennis balls for something that fits the cups more snugly, like crumpled paper wedged down tight.
The Mistake Most People Make
Rushing the introduction.
If the first version is too hard, your dog quits, and dachshunds hold a grudge against activities that have insulted them. Start with treats under balls that are barely resting on top, let them win immediately, and build difficulty from there.
2. The Shell Game (Working Memory Training)
Three cups, one treat, plenty of confusion.
Let your dachshund watch you place a treat under one of three overturned cups. Slide the cups around slowly, then let them choose.
This one is different from the muffin tin because it is not primarily about scent. It targets working memory, which is the ability to hold information in mind while something else is happening.
That is a genuinely difficult skill for dogs. It is difficult for humans too, which is why the version of this game played on a folding table in a tourist district takes so much money off people.
Start Absurdly Easy
One cup. Just one.
Put the treat under it, let them nose it over, celebrate like they have solved a crime. You are teaching the concept that a hidden thing still exists, which is not obvious to every dog.
Add a second cup only when the first one is boring. Add a third when the second is boring.
Do not shuffle at all until they are picking the correct stationary cup nearly every time. Shuffling is the final layer, not the starting point.
Why Dachshunds Are Weirdly Good at This
Independent thinkers are patient thinkers.
A retriever tends to look at you for the answer, which is charming but not helpful here. A dachshund will stare at the cups and work it out, because centuries of breeding taught them that no human is coming to help with the badger.
That self reliance makes them excellent shell game players once they understand the rules. It also makes them harder to teach initially, since they are less interested in your opinion than most breeds are.
Independence is not stubbornness wearing a costume. It is a dog trying to solve the problem their own way first, which is precisely what they were built to do.
3. The Name Game (Object Discrimination)
This is the most impressive one, and the one that takes the longest.
Teach your dachshund the names of individual toys. Then ask for a specific toy by name and watch them go get the right one.
Dogs can learn a surprising number of object labels. The famous cases involve border collies with vocabularies in the hundreds, but plenty of ordinary dogs manage a solid dozen, and a dozen is genuinely impressive when your dog is shaped like a loaf of bread.
The Method
Pick one toy. Give it a short, distinct name that does not sound like any command your dog already knows.
Say the name every time they interact with it. Every time. Play with it only while using that name, then put it away so the name stays attached to something special.
After a week or so, place that toy on the floor alone and ask for it. Reward heavily when they touch it.
Then, and only then, add a second toy with a second name. The moment they can pick correctly between two toys, you have proven the concept, and everything after that is repetition.
Where It Goes Wrong
People add toys too quickly and the whole vocabulary collapses into "go get a thing."
The other common failure is picking names that rhyme or share sounds. Ball and Bear will blur together. Ball and Sock will not.
Be patient with the pace. Some dogs pick up their second object in three days and their fifth in three weeks, and there is no pattern to it.
Fitting These Into a Real Week
None of this needs a scheduled block on your calendar.
Ten minutes, three or four times a week, will produce a visibly different dog inside a month. Shorter and more frequent beats long and occasional, especially with a breed that has strong opinions about how long anything should last.
Watch for the moment your dog checks out. Dachshunds signal it clearly: they wander off, they suddenly need to investigate something across the room, they lie down and stare at the wall.
End the session before that moment, not after. A game that always stops while it is still fun is a game your dog will be eager to play again.
Quit while they are winning. The goal is a dog who thinks these puzzles are the best part of the day, not one who has learned that puzzles go on too long.
A Note on the Back
Dachshunds come with a spine that deserves respect, and this is where mental games earn their keep.
Every one of these three works at floor level with no jumping, no stairs, and no twisting. That matters enormously for a breed where disc problems are the most common serious health issue they face.
Keep the muffin tin on the ground rather than on a raised surface. Keep the shell game cups spread out so your dog is not craning upward or reaching sideways at an odd angle.
Mental exercise is the rare thing you can give a dachshund in generous amounts without any physical cost at all. Their brain does not have a weight limit, and it does not wear out the way their back does.