Dachshund Roughly 165 words. That is the vocabulary ceiling researchers have measured for the average dog, and the sharpest ones sail past 250 without much effort.
Now think about how many words the typical dachshund is actually asked to learn. Sit. Stay. No. And their own name, usually delivered at volume from another room.
Something has gone wrong in that math, and it is not the dog’s fault.
The breed wears a reputation for stubbornness so heavy that nobody bothers questioning it anymore. But a dog bred to squeeze into a badger tunnel and make life or death decisions alone, in the dark, twenty feet from any human, was never built to await instructions.
That independence is not defiance. It is a résumé.
Which means teaching a doxie tricks is less about winning a battle of wills and more about handing that stubborn little brain a puzzle worth solving. Seven of them, to be exact, and your dog can start on the first one before dinner.
Before You Start: Why Five Minutes Beats Fifty
Long training sessions are where enthusiasm goes to die. Dachshunds check out fast when something stops being interesting.
Keep it to five minutes. Twice a day. End while your dog still wants more, which feels wrong and works beautifully.
A dachshund who quits training is not being difficult. A dachshund who quits training has simply concluded, correctly, that the game got boring.
Use food they would sell you out for. Not kibble. We are talking chicken, cheese, freeze dried liver, the stuff that makes their eyebrows move.
1. Touch: The Trick That Quietly Unlocks Every Other One
Touch means your dog boops their nose against your open palm on cue. It sounds like nothing. It is secretly the most useful thing on this entire list.
Once a dog understands targeting, you can move them anywhere without pulling, luring, or negotiating.
Getting the First Boop
Hold your flat palm about two inches from their nose. Curiosity does the rest, because a nose that close to a hand will investigate.
The instant their nose makes contact, mark it with a cheerful "yes" and pay up.
Repeat ten times, then stop. Move your hand a little lower, a little higher, a little farther away over the next few days until they are crossing the room to slap their nose into your palm like a tiny furry high five.
2. Spin
Pure showmanship, and dachshunds are natural hams once they figure out an audience exists.
Hold a treat at nose height and draw a slow circle in the air. Their body follows their nose, which is the whole secret to nearly every body movement trick.
Say spin as they complete the loop, not before. Words come after the behavior is reliable, always.
Fade the treat from your hand within a week or you will end up with a dog who only spins for visible food, which is a sad little arrangement for everyone involved.
Teach the opposite direction too, and give it a different word. Twirl works. So does other way, said with mild exasperation.
3. Find It
Here is where the breed stops performing and starts working.
Dachshunds carry a scenting ability that punches absurdly above their size, and most of them spend their entire lives never using it for anything more demanding than locating a dropped cracker.
How to Set It Up
Put your dog behind a door or have someone hold them. Hide three or four treats in easy spots around one room: beside a chair leg, on the edge of a rug, tucked against the baseboard.
Release them with "find it" and let them work. Do not point. Do not help. The struggle is the entire point.
Ten minutes of scent work will tire a dachshund more thoroughly than a two mile walk, and it costs you nothing but a handful of cheese.
Once they get the idea, hide the treats in harder places. Then hide a favorite toy instead. Then hide yourself, which is where this trick becomes genuinely delightful.
Rainy day problem solved, permanently.
4. Take a Bow
Front end down, back end up, tail wagging in the air like a metronome. It photographs incredibly well and it stretches their spine in a way most doxies seem to genuinely enjoy.
Start with your dog standing. Hold a treat at their chest, then lower it slowly toward the floor and slightly back toward their toes.
Their front end drops. Their rear stays up, at least for a second.
That second is all you need. Mark it, reward it, and build the duration one heartbeat at a time.
If their back end collapses into a down, you moved the treat too far back. Shorten the motion and try again without fussing about it.
5. Speak, and Much More Importantly, Quiet
Dachshunds have opinions. Loud ones, delivered at a pitch that carries through walls, doors, and apparently solid concrete.
Fighting the barking rarely works. Putting it on cue works surprisingly often.
The Counterintuitive Part
You teach speak first, on purpose, which feels like handing a toddler a drum set. Trust the process.
Find whatever reliably triggers a bark: the doorbell, a knock on the wall, a squeaky toy held just out of reach. Trigger it, and the moment they bark, reward.
After a few dozen reps, say "speak" right before the trigger. Eventually the word alone does the job.
Now the payoff. Ask for a bark, then hold a treat near their nose and wait for the silence that follows the sniff. Say quiet during that gap and pay generously.
A dog who understands both cues has a volume dial. You will use it every single day.
6. Go to Your Mat
Not flashy. Enormously civilized.
Toss a treat onto a small bed or towel. When your dog steps on, mark and reward while they are standing there.
Let them wander off, then repeat. Most doxies work this out in under twenty repetitions because they are motivated and the puzzle is simple.
Add the words once they are voluntarily marching over. Then start asking for a down on the mat, then a longer down, then a down while you walk to the kitchen.
Build distance and duration separately, never both at once. That single rule prevents about eighty percent of the frustration people run into.
The reward here is a dog who settles when the pizza arrives instead of orbiting the delivery driver at ankle level.
7. Burrow on Cue
Every dachshund owner already knows their dog will disappear under a blanket the second one is available. The trick is putting that instinct on a word.
Drape a throw blanket loosely over a low arm of the couch so it forms a small cave. Toss a treat underneath.
They will go in. Of course they will go in. Say tunnel while their whole body is hidden, then celebrate when they pop back out.
The best dachshund tricks are not the ones you invented. They are the ones the dog was already doing, given a name and a round of applause.
Repeat until the word alone sends them diving. Then try it with a different blanket in a different room so they learn the cue means the behavior, not that one specific couch.
It is genuinely charming at parties, and it gives an anxious dog a portable coping strategy they can access on request.