My grandmother's red miniature dachshund was a biter.
There are certain breeds of dogs that are forever etched in my memory.
Among these is a red miniature smooth-coated dachshund (Teckel, Dackel– I’ll explain the distinction later). I should mention here that I’m of German-American extraction, and one of the signs my family’s ethnic pride was to get one of these dogs.
The first of these lived with my grandparents while my father and uncle were adolescents to young adults. He was a standard dachshund with a smooth coat. Apparently, he was an oddity among standard dachshunds with smooth coats because he had all the hunting instincts and ability of the wire-haired hunting dachshund of Germany. He was a superb rabbit hunter, and he could game trail shot large game, just as his ancestors were used in the old country. He was a clever dog. Highly trainable for a sort of hound/terrier.
When he passed on, he was replaced with another red smooth-haired dachshund. However, this dog was treated like a small baby. She was only a few inches long when she arrived. She was also clever, but she used it to devious ends. She also was able to use her teeth to get what she wanted, and by the time she was two, she was biting people regularly. My grandmother never bothered to train her. She just coddled her little baby.
This was the only dog to have ever bitten me, and as a result, I have a few issues with red dachshunds, especially little ones with smooth coats. This dog bit me on more than one occasion, so you know how much this could affect my perception of this breed. I’m sure they’re not all nasty little red Nazi dogs, but I’m still unable to get the image out of my mind.
However, I happen to be somewhat of an admirer of the working Dachshund, which is still used in Germany. It is not called a Dachshund, which means “badger dog.” This term is a generic phrase that can mean the breed we call the Dachshund and to mean the two breeds of Dachsbrache (badger hound) that still exist in the Old Country (the Westphalian and the Alpine). The Westphalian is very rare, although its close cousin, the Drever, is still known in Sweden. The Alpine dog still exists in limited numbers.
The breed we call the Dachshund is known as the Dackel, which is probably a diminutive of the word for Dachsbracke. The Dackel was originally a smooth-haired dog, probably derived from crossing pinschers (German pseudo-terriers) with the Dachsbracke. This dog was then crossed with the old German spaniel and English cocker spaniels to create the long-haired variety. And crosses griffon bassets, schnauzers, poodles, and maybe Dandie Dinmonts created the wire-haired variety, which is much more preferred as a working dog. All of these dogs are called Dackel, until they pass a scent trailing test. At that point the dogs become Teckel (I know them more as Teckel than Dackel for some reason. Perhaps it is the dialect of German I’m more familiar with).
In the US and UK, the dachshund comes in two sizes: a miniature and a standard. Standards, according the AKC, run from 16 to 32 pounds (quite a range), while the miniatures are all under 11 pounds. The reason why there is such a gap is probably to prevent cross-breeding of sizes. In the US, the coat types are typically never interbred, even though they are members of the same breed.
In Germany (and the FCI standard), there are three sizes: Standard/Normalschlag, Dwarf/Zwerg, and Rabbit/Kaninchen. The Standard dog has a chest circumference of 35 cm. The Dwarf variety has a chest circumference of 30-35 cm. The Rabbit variety has a chest circumference up to 30 cm.
The reason why the chest is so important is that it determines which game the dog can be used against. The Normalschlag/Standard can be used on wild boar, foxes, and badgers, while the little Rabbit dachshund is a small game hunter and ratter. It is a specially designed dog for flushing rabbits. The ideal weight for one of these little ones is about 7 pounds.
My grandmother’s little terror weighed 7 pounds. If only my grandparents had known that the little ones are also designed for work, they might have worked with their little biter and made her into a great hunting dog. Then maybe she wouldn’t have decided to hunt everyone in the neighborhood.
P.S. I prefer not to type umlauts. Keep the comments in “Die Englische Sprache.”
German you say? Howdy neighbor. Bavarian here. Depends on which decade and war to figure out which country, but the general area where all those geniuses and future world monarchs came from.
Funny that one of them was Queen V who also had a fondness for her German heritage breeds.
It’s like that great BBC show “Connections.”
My people are originally from Stettin (Sczeczin), just like Catherine the Great. That makes me, no pun intended, a Pomeranian. My ancestors moved there from Westphalia, which is why my last name is an Anglicized bastardization of Westfal/Westval/Westphal.
Prince Albert was actually born in Germany. That was one of the scandals. Victoria had brought in a foreigner to be her husband. Of course, he was a bit into extending the franchise, which ticked off all interested parties. I think his sympathies lay with Gladstone over Disraeli, although I can’t find the source. Victoria, of course, loved Disraeli, because he made her Empress of India.
I read a book and there was a comment to a novice about which dogs to be careful around:
“Dachshunds. Watch our for the little red smooths, they have a strong tendency to bite”.
As the owner of one of these little alligators, I can confirm that. While mine was an abuse seizure who had bitten a lot of people who tried to keep him, he has never bitten me since I got him at age 2 and at 14 yrs is mellowing out quite nicely :>)
Maybe it’s the red hair? (I’m of Irish ancestry and you know our rep)
Speaking of my own ancestry, I am stubborn (and every once in a while feel like invading some country that is impossible to invade– like Russia.) But I digress.
I don’t know what it is about little red ones, but I think they are very much designed to be working dogs. It’s just no one in this country thinks a dog of that size has any purpose. The little ones also have a touch of miniature pinscher somewhere in them (in fact, the puppy mills cross the mini dachshunds with minpins all the time). And mini pinschers can be very reactive dogs.
If I ever got a dachshund, it would be a working-bred Normalschlagteckel (probably wire-haired) from German lines.
There are two Bavarian villages named Landau, from which the carriage (which the Queen called a Landau in her journals) gets its name. They’re both within short distance from the valleys where BMW and Mercedes got their start, and still left their mark in the form of the Landau window on cars like the Lincoln Town Car and Cadillac which had “cloth top” models with those small portrait windows with either a scripty L or even “Landau” printed underneath.
Victoria was a hun, speaking German before she learned English. And despite all the seeming reverence of my recent posts, she also carried on the family tradition of inbreeding and placing her heirs on most of the thrones of Europe.
I have a post in the works about Swabia, which has had a rather unique contribution to the Who’s Who of world affairs.
Saxe-Gotha-Coburg (Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha) was her family. That’s now the Windsor family.
The area where my people come from is no longer German. It’s now in Poland. Differs a bit from Bavaria in that everyone was a wheat or rye farmer and Lutheran. I found relatives who have since become Polonized. They spell the last name Westwal (pronounced about the same way but l’s in Polish are not pronounced the same way). It’s at the northern end of Churchill’s “Iron Curtain speech”– “From Stettin in the North to Trieste in the South…”
Albert was also a German and a bit of a democrat. This nobility in Britain didn’t like this very much. And they did bring in his Germanness to defame him. I suppose the fact that Victoria was born in England gave her a bit of a pass. Her whole family were of German extraction. In fact, the British royal family was always some form of German nobility since the rise of George I.
It was a standard red smooth whatever you want to call it that brought me off my bicycle by grabbing my pant leg and onto the pavement at age 10 giving me a skull fracture and concussion, and also fracturing my bottom jaw, knocking out several teeth when the bicycle landed on my face. I vividly remember the surgeon stitching up the wound on my jaw left by the gear shift lever.
Those were the days before leash laws in suburban areas and/or confining your dog to your property. I do believe the dogs’ owners, who were wealthy suburbanites, paid for my hospital stay in spite of the fact there were no witnesses. The dog had that kind of reputation.
I have an appreciation for the high drive in this breed, but wish they would return the breed to it’s earlier type. Talk about deformity!
The hunting wirehaired teckels aren’t that bad. They have longer legs, too.
For some reason, the wirehaired dachshund is very uncommon in North America, but if you go to Germany and say Dachshund (Teckel/Dackel), they think of wirehaired dogs. The longhaired ones are also common. I believe one was the symbol of the Munich Olympics.
Servus und Grusse Gott.
Habe die ehre from fellow Baorischer?
In Austria and Bavaria we say “Dackl”:
BUT in many country- including those not effected much by Germany such as France, Spain and Portgual- and even South America- they call it Teckel.
Can you imagine even in Nederlands and Indonesie the dackl is called a “tekkel”?.
Is this a Northern or Osti German dialect- as I have never in my life heard it in Southern Germany- always “Daaahkellll”?
As per the kurz haar dackel- there is no difference really in temperament as opposed to the rough hair version.
True- mini pinschers are very snappy- and I suspect the Dobermann pinscher was at one stage bred into the dackel line for the kurz haar coat and colouration.
The rough hair one more likes the chasing of the cats- even though they are becoming friends again at sleep time.
I think the short hair is more playful and very clever and naughty- but the long hair is more willing to be lazy.
I have both- I would argue the red hair is not of much difference- it depends on the rearing- sometimes a litter can have a bully biter.
But having been bitten many times- it is not that hard and i have no understanding why people are afraid of such small dog bites.
One should be more careful of even a golden retreuiver or labradore as their jaw muscle is many times more stronger and massive.
Dackel is only kniff, knif,f kniff.
No knirschen.
But for surgery from my own hunting Irish setter and a Bretagne Spaniel on my hand for crushed metacarpals when they get too excited and not want to release up the pheasant or game.
Yes- quite painful- but not so severe as to be haunting one forever.
The Munich Olympiade mascot was the very FIRST! and I think the best so far along with the Moskva Bear.
He is “Waldi”- by the famous Bavarian graphic artist Otl Aicher- the father of the modern iconographic image.
Munich games incorporated Aicher’s brilliant simplified pictographs. Aicher is very possibly the single most important German graphical artist he is mimicked globally ever since.
“Waldi” has been suggested to be combination of the famous “Wald” of Bavaria and of course the most common Dackel name in Bavaria- “Poldi” after Herr Koenig Leopold.
Additionally “Wasstl” is very common name, as you know- and even the “Wackel Dackel” so this may also explain the “Wa-) of Waldi.
It was never really explained even then.
So, for 1972 Olympiade everything Bavarian was bast schoen- until awful terrorism activities.
Cute! I’ve always wanted a dachsund that looked like that!
One of the worst dogs I knew as a kid was a smooth black and tan Dachshund. It was allowed loose near a public pond that is also a wildlife habitat. A little heel biter,and dog teaser but never actually punctured the skin.