Dachshund Six months into potty training and there’s still a puddle by the back door every Tuesday morning. Sound about right?
You are not failing. You are just living with a dog that was bred to crawl into badger tunnels alone and make its own decisions down there.
That independence is the whole point of the breed. It is also the reason your training sessions feel like negotiations with a very small lawyer.
The good news: every one of these problems has a fix. The fix just rarely looks like what works on a golden retriever.
1. The Housebreaking Nightmare That Will Not End
Ask any long-time owner what took the longest and they will say the same thing. Potty training.
Some dachshunds take six months. Some take a year. A few decide at eighteen months that indoors is fine, actually, and revert entirely.
There are real reasons behind this, and none of them are about your dog being stubborn or spiteful.
Why It Is Harder Than You Expected
Small bladders, small body, low ground clearance. That last one matters more than people realize.
When your dog’s belly is four inches off the ground, wet grass feels like wading into a lake. Cold concrete in January is genuinely miserable.
So they hold it. They wait by the door, get carried outside, refuse to squat, come back in, and then relieve themselves somewhere warm and carpeted twenty minutes later.
A dachshund who refuses to potty outside in bad weather is not being defiant. That dog is making a completely rational choice about comfort, and the solution is changing the conditions, not the discipline.
What Actually Fixes It
Cover a small section of your yard. A patio, an awning, a tarp staked over a corner of grass, anything that keeps one potty spot dry.
Put a towel or a piece of artificial turf down there in cold months so their feet stay off freezing ground.
Then get militant about the schedule. Out first thing, after every meal, after every nap, after every play session, and last thing at night. Not "when they seem like they need to," but on the clock, every single time.
Reward within three seconds of the last drop. Not when they come back inside. Three seconds, outside, in the spot.
And clean accidents with an enzymatic cleaner, never ammonia based products. Ammonia smells like urine to a dog and marks the spot as an approved bathroom.
2. Barking at Absolutely Everything
The mail carrier. A leaf. A neighbor’s car door two streets over. Silence itself, apparently.
Dachshunds were bred to bark underground so hunters could locate them through several feet of dirt. That voice is a feature, not a bug.
Which means you are never training it away completely. You are training the volume knob.
Separate the Types of Barking
Alert barking, demand barking, and boredom barking all look identical and need completely different responses.
Alert barking is a reaction to something outside. Demand barking is aimed at you and wants a thing: food, attention, the couch. Boredom barking happens when nothing has occupied that brain in six hours.
Treating all three the same is why most people get nowhere.
The Fix for Each One
For alert barking, teach a "quiet" cue by rewarding the pause. Wait for the two second gap in barking, mark it with a word, treat immediately. You are paying for silence, so you have to catch silence when it happens naturally.
For demand barking, the answer is boring but absolute: never reward it. Not once. One caved-in moment out of fifty teaches your dog that fifty barks is the price, and they will happily pay it.
Intermittent reinforcement builds the strongest habits in the animal kingdom. It is exactly why slot machines work, and it is exactly why occasionally giving in creates a louder dog than never giving in ever would.
For boredom barking, add a snuffle mat, a frozen stuffed toy, or ten minutes of scent games. A tired nose does more than a tired body with this breed.
3. Pulling Like a Freight Train on Leash
Eleven pounds of dog, and somehow you are being towed down the sidewalk.
The instinct here is prey drive plus a nose that outranks everything else in the moment. A squirrel trail is not a distraction to a dachshund. It is the entire universe.
Why Standard Advice Falls Flat
Most leash training advice assumes a dog that checks in with you. Retrievers glance back. Dachshunds commit to the trail.
Stopping every time they pull works eventually, but it can take weeks of walks that cover forty feet total. Most owners quit before it clicks.
A Faster Approach
Switch to a harness with a front clip. Never a collar, and this is a health issue as much as a training one, since neck pressure on a long-spined breed is a genuinely bad idea.
Front clips redirect the dog gently sideways when they pull, so forward motion stops without any correction from you.
Then build engagement before you leave the house. Ten reps of your dog making eye contact for a treat in the living room, then the same on the porch, then the driveway.
Bring high value treats on the walk. Not kibble. Something that competes with squirrel scent, like cheese or freeze dried liver.
And let them sniff on purpose. A five minute sniffing break in one bush satisfies more of that hunting brain than a mile of brisk walking.
4. Refusing to Come When Called
You call. They look directly at you. They continue in the opposite direction.
Recall is arguably the hardest command for this breed, and the reason is baked into their job description.
The Independent Hunter Problem
These dogs were bred to work alone, out of earshot, making decisions without a human. A dachshund several feet underground could not check in for instructions.
Nine generations of that selection do not evaporate because you bought a clicker.
Building Recall That Holds
Start indoors with zero distractions. Say the word once, reward heavily when they arrive. Never repeat the cue, because repeating it teaches your dog that "come" actually means "come on the fourth or fifth time."
Make the payoff enormous. Not one treat: five treats delivered one at a time, plus praise, plus a moment of play. Coming back to you should be the best thing that happens all day.
Never call your dog to do something they dislike. Nail trims, baths, the end of a play session at the park: go get them for those. Do not poison the cue.
A recall command is a promise. The moment your dog learns that coming back sometimes ends the fun, that command becomes a suggestion they get to evaluate.
Use a long line, thirty feet, in open areas while you build reliability. And be realistic: many dachshunds are never fully safe off leash near roads, and a good long line is not a failure.
5. Digging Up the Yard Like They Are Paid to Do It
Craters in the flower bed. Excavations under the fence. The mulch, redistributed.
Here is the thing you probably already suspected: you cannot train this out. Digging is not a behavior problem for a dachshund. It is the job the breed exists to do.
Stop Fighting It, Redirect It
Give them a legal dig zone. A sandbox, a raised bed, a kiddie pool full of soft dirt or play sand in a shaded corner.
Bury treats and toys in it while they watch. Then act delighted when they dig them up.
Most dogs transfer within a week or two, because the approved spot is easier to dig and it pays.
Managing the Rest of the Yard
Interrupt digging elsewhere with a neutral sound, then walk them to the dig zone and get excited there. No scolding, which just teaches them to dig when you are not looking.
If they are excavating along a fence line, bury chicken wire a few inches down or line the base with pavers.
And check the weather. A lot of yard digging in summer is a dog making itself a cool hollow to lie in, and shade plus water fixes that faster than any training protocol.
One Bonus Note on All Five
Sessions should be short. Five minutes, twice a day, ending while your dog is still interested.
Dachshunds do not respond to drilling. They respond to being paid well for a small amount of work, which, when you think about the entire history of the breed, is fairly on brand.