Dachshund Ask ten dachshund owners what training their dog is like, and seven will hand you the same tired line: stubborn. Hopeless. A dog who hears "come" and quietly files it under suggestions rather than instructions.
That’s the biggest misconception in the entire breed, and it’s wrong in a specific way that matters.
Dachshunds were bred to go underground after badgers, alone, in the dark, with no human anywhere close enough to tell them what to do next. A dog who paused mid tunnel to check in with a handler was a dog who got hurt. Independent decision making wasn’t a bug in the breed. It was the whole job.
That wiring didn’t evaporate when the badgers stopped being part of the deal.
The myth sticks around because people confuse independence with defiance, and because a twelve pound dog blowing off a command looks hilarious instead of alarming. Nobody laughs when a Rottweiler ignores "leave it."
Here’s what makes it genuinely serious for this breed, though: your dachshund is carrying a spine built like a suspension bridge with too much span and not enough support. Roughly one in four will deal with intervertebral disc disease at some point.
Which reframes the whole conversation. Several of the commands below aren’t manners. They’re spine insurance.
A dachshund never simply refuses a command. A dachshund evaluates the command, considers the offer, and decides whether you’ve made a compelling case.
Make the case. Here’s where to start.
1. Sit
Boring? Absolutely. Foundational? Also absolutely.
Sit is the command that teaches your dachshund the actual mechanic of training: you make a sound, I do a thing, good stuff happens. Everything else is built on that loop.
Why it’s harder than it looks for this breed
Long backs mean sitting isn’t always comfortable, especially on slick floors where the back legs slide out. Some dachshunds will hover in a half sit and look at you like you’ve asked something unreasonable.
Train it on carpet or a rug. Reward the attempt early on, then raise your standards once the position becomes easy.
Building duration
Once she’s sitting reliably, start counting. One second, treat. Three seconds, treat. Ten seconds, jackpot.
A sit that lasts two seconds is a trick. A sit that holds while you clip a leash on, open the door, or greet a delivery driver is a tool you’ll use daily.
2. Wait
Wait is the one I’d tattoo on every new dachshund owner’s forearm if that were legal and hygienic.
It’s different from stay: stay means hold this exact position, wait simply means don’t cross this line yet. Doorways, car doors, the top of a staircase, the edge of the couch.
Start at a doorway. Open it an inch, say "wait," and close it the instant she moves forward. Open again. Repeat until the door can swing wide while she holds her ground, then release her with a clear word like "okay."
Twenty repetitions spread across a week, and you’ve built something that could genuinely save her from bolting into a street.
3. Come
Recall is the command that gets practiced in low pressure situations and then relied on in high pressure ones, which is exactly backwards.
Make the word priceless
Never call her to you for anything unpleasant. Not for nail trims, not for baths, not for the end of a fun outing. If "come" reliably predicts something great, you’ll get a rocket. If it sometimes predicts a bath, you’ll get a negotiation.
Practice in a place she can’t lose
Hallways. Fenced yards. A long line in an open park. Scent driven breeds follow their noses straight into trouble, and a dachshund locked onto a rabbit trail has effectively stopped receiving your radio signal.
The recall you rehearse in your kitchen on a Tuesday is the recall you’ll get on the worst day of your life. Rehearse it like it matters.
Use high value rewards here, not the dry biscuits from the pantry. Chicken. Cheese. The good stuff.
4. Leave It
Dachshunds are ground level scavengers with excellent noses and no self restraint whatsoever regarding sidewalk mysteries.
"Leave it" means: disengage from that thing and look at me instead.
The two treat method
Hold a treat in a closed fist. Let her sniff, paw, and generally lobby for it. The moment she backs off even slightly, say "yes" and reward her from your other hand.
The lesson lands fast: ignoring the thing you want produces something better. Repeat with treats on the floor, then under your shoe, then uncovered, then out on walks with real world temptations.
This command protects against chicken bones, dropped medication, chocolate on the coffee table, and roughly nine hundred other things that show up in emergency vet intake forms.
5. Off
Not "down," which most people already use to mean lie down. Off means all four feet return to the floor.
The furniture problem
Nobody wants to hear that jumping off the sofa is bad for a dachshund. Everybody’s dog does it. Everybody’s dog has been doing it for years.
The impact of a repeated landing compresses spinal discs that were already at a structural disadvantage. It’s not one leap that causes a problem, it’s ten thousand of them.
Each jump off the couch is a small withdrawal from an account your dachshund can never make a deposit into.
Teach "off" as a cue to use ramps and steps instead. Place a ramp against the couch, lure her up and down it a few dozen times over a week, and pair the descent with the word.
She’ll take the ramp on her own eventually, mostly because you made it the easiest route.
6. Quiet
Dachshunds bark. It’s genuinely part of the package: a dog working underground needed a voice loud enough to be located from above.
You will not train that out of her, and honestly, you shouldn’t want to.
Trade the bark for silence
Wait for a pause. Every barking dog eventually inhales.
The second the silence happens, mark it ("yes!") and reward. You’re paying for quiet, not punishing noise, and that distinction changes everything about how fast this works.
Some trainers teach "speak" first and then "quiet," because a behavior you can turn on is much easier to turn off. Slightly counterintuitive, wildly effective.
Address the cause too
A dachshund who barks at the window for four hours is bored, not badly behaved. Snuffle mats, frozen food puzzles, and a genuine sniffing walk will do more for the barking than any command.
7. Place
"Place" means go to that specific spot and stay there until released. A bed, a mat, a folded blanket by the kitchen.
It’s the single most useful command in a busy house.
Dinner being served? Place. Guests arriving in a hurricane of coats and boots? Place. Toddler eating crackers at floor level, which any dachshund considers an open invitation? Place.
How to build it
Toss a treat onto the mat. When she steps on it, mark and reward. Add the word once the pattern is obvious, then start rewarding her for staying rather than arriving.
Build duration slowly, and give her something to do while she’s there. A chew turns a two minute stay into a twenty minute one without any additional training on your part.
The beautiful part is that place becomes her default setting during chaos, a spot she chooses because good things reliably happen there.
Train these seven in short bursts, three to five minutes at a stretch, several times a day. Dachshunds get bored long before they get tired, and a bored dachshund starts inventing her own curriculum.
Keep the sessions short, the rewards excellent, and the expectations honest. She isn’t stubborn.
She’s just waiting for you to make it worth her while.