Dachshund Training a dachshund has roughly the same emotional arc as negotiating with a tiny, furry union representative who has already read the contract and found three loopholes you didn’t know existed.
That comparison sounds dramatic until you’ve spent forty minutes convincing a nine pound dog that the recall cue applies to him too.
I’ve trained a lot of breeds. Dachshunds are the ones that taught me the most, mostly because they kept proving my methods wrong in real time.
The First Thing Nobody Tells You
Dachshunds were bred to go underground, alone, and make life or death decisions without checking in with a human first. That instinct did not vanish because you bought a memory foam bed.
So when your doxie ignores you, he isn’t being spiteful. He’s running an independent cost benefit analysis and you’re losing.
Once I accepted that, everything changed.
Stubborn Is the Wrong Word
Every dachshund owner I meet uses the word stubborn. I’ve stopped using it entirely, because it frames the dog as an obstacle instead of a negotiator.
What you’re actually seeing is a dog with high independence and low tolerance for pointless repetition. Ask a dachshund to sit fifteen times in a row for nothing and he’ll simply stop participating, which is honestly reasonable.
A dachshund doesn’t refuse commands. He declines offers he considers underpriced.
Raise your offer. The behavior follows.
What Actually Works: Confessions From the Trenches
Here’s where I admit the stuff that gets me side eye at group classes.
Confession One: I Bribe Shamelessly
Purists hate this. They want the dog working for praise and the pure joy of partnership.
Dachshunds want cheese.
I use high value food for far longer than most trainers recommend, and I fade it far more slowly. A doxie who has been paid well for six months of recall practice will come running at nine years old. A doxie who got a pat on the head will consider his options.
Confession Two: Three Minutes Beats Thirty
Long sessions destroy dachshund enthusiasm. The dog checks out around minute four and then you’re just repeating yourself at a small mammal who has mentally left the building.
I train in bursts. Ninety seconds before breakfast. Two minutes while the coffee brews. Three minutes in the yard before we come inside.
Short sessions, ended while the dog still wants more, build a dog who runs toward training instead of away from it. That’s the whole secret and it costs nothing.
Confession Three: I Let Them Sniff
This one surprises people. On walks, I let dachshunds follow their nose for large stretches, because scent work is not a distraction from training, it’s the currency the breed understands best.
A dog who gets to use his nose is a satisfied dog. A satisfied dog listens better when it counts.
The Behaviors That Actually Cause Trouble
Ask ten owners what’s hard and you’ll hear the same four things.
Barking at Absolutely Everything
Dachshunds were bred to bark underground so the hunter could locate them. That voice is a feature, not a defect, which means "quiet" is not going to be a natural default.
I don’t try to eliminate the barking. I redirect the timing of it.
Teach a cue that means "come tell me about it," where the dog gets to alert, then comes to you and gets paid. You get three barks instead of thirty, and the dog gets to do his job.
Suppressing a dachshund’s voice is like unplugging a smoke detector. The problem is still there, you just stopped hearing about it.
The Potty Training Wall
I’ve never met a breed with a worse reputation here, and honestly, some of it is earned. Small bladders, low ground clearance in wet grass, and a genuine belief that rain is a personal insult.
What works: a schedule so predictable it’s boring, and never, ever letting the dog out of your sight indoors for the first several months.
What doesn’t work: punishment. It teaches the dog to hide the evidence, not to hold it.
Digging Up Your Garden
He’s a badger dog. The clue is right there in the name.
Give him a sandbox, a dig pit, a designated patch of ruined lawn. Bury treats in it. Praise the demolition.
Fighting the instinct fails. Redirecting it works within about a week, in my experience, which is faster than almost anything else on this list.
The Velcro Problem
Dachshunds bond hard and they bond fast. That’s the charm and also the risk, because separation anxiety in this breed is common and it escalates quietly.
Start alone time early and casually. Leave for two minutes. Come back and be boring about it.
Departures and arrivals should be the least interesting moments of the day.
The Body Thing You Cannot Ignore
Any trainer working with dachshunds who isn’t thinking about spinal health is doing half the job.
That long back is beautiful and it is fragile. Intervertebral disc disease is a real risk in this breed, and training choices either protect the spine or slowly stress it.
Practical Rules I Never Bend
No jumping off furniture. Ramps or steps at every couch and bed, taught as a trained behavior with treats, not just placed there hopefully.
No stairs during puppyhood if you can manage it. Carry them, and support the chest and rear at the same time so the spine stays level.
Keep them lean. A few extra pounds on a dachshund is the equivalent of loading a bookshelf sideways and hoping for the best.
The Mistakes I Made So You Don’t Have To
Early on, I treated dachshunds like small terriers. Wrong energy, wrong pacing, wrong rewards.
I also let them get away with things I’d never allow in a bigger dog. Jumping on guests, resource guarding the couch, barking at the mail carrier for eleven minutes.
Small dog, small behavior, right? That thinking created every serious problem I later had to fix.
Take the Behavior Seriously From Day One
If a growl over a chew toy would concern you in a Labrador, it should concern you in a dachshund. The teeth are smaller. The pattern is identical.
Address it early, calmly, with management and trades, and it stays small. Ignore it because he’s adorable and it grows.
The size of the dog determines the damage. It does not determine the behavior.
Building a Dog Who Wants to Work With You
Here’s the part that took me years to understand.
Dachshunds don’t work for you the way a border collie does. They work with you, if they’ve decided the partnership is worth it.
So build the partnership. Play games where he wins. Use his nose, hide treats around the house, let him solve puzzles.
Say his name and give him something good, hundreds of times, until his name alone makes him spin around.
Consistency Beats Intensity
You do not need to be a strict trainer. You need to be a predictable one.
Same rules on Tuesday as on Saturday. Same rules when your mother in law visits. Same rules when he’s doing the thing with his eyes.
A dachshund will test the boundary roughly forty times to confirm it’s real. Hold it forty one times and he’ll stop asking.
The Recall Question
Everyone wants to know if a dachshund can be trusted off leash.
My honest answer: mostly no, and I say that as someone who has trained recall obsessively for years.
Why It’s So Hard
A scent hound following a trail is neurologically committed. Sound stops reaching him in any meaningful way, and your voice becomes background noise in a very compelling story he’s reading with his nose.
Train recall anyway. Train it in the house, the yard, the hallway, on a long line at the park.
Build it high value, build it often, and treat every successful recall like he just pulled a child from a burning building. Then keep the leash on near roads anyway, because good training and good judgment are not the same skill.
Where Most Owners Go Wrong
They quit too early. Dachshund progress is not linear, and around month four most people decide the breed simply can’t be trained.
Month five is usually when it clicks.
Keep the sessions short. Keep the rewards high. Keep your expectations honest about what this breed was built to do, and then work with that history instead of against it.