Where the dachshund comes from: a short breed history

The German word “Dachshund” literally means “badger dog” (Dachs is badger, Hund is dog). It is not a metaphor: the breed was developed for work underground, and the FCI standard still describes the dachshund as a hunting dog working above and below ground [S1].

Breed history attracts legend, so this article separates what can be pointed to in sources from what gets repeated without one.

Origins

The FCI standard says broadly that the dachshund has been known since the Middle Ages and was bred out of Bracken-type dogs, selecting consistently for dogs suited to work below ground [S1]. The Dachshund Club of America dates the first description of a dog with similar characteristics to 1700, and an illustration of similar dogs to 1719 [S2].

Names such as “Dachs Krieger” and “Dachs Kriecher”, which circulate in owner guides, are omitted here: we did not find them in the FCI standard, in breed club publications or in a reliable historical source.

Why such short legs

The dachshund’s build relates to the badger sett. A sett entrance is better described by the dimensions of the opening, roughly 30 cm wide and 20 cm high, than by a single diameter.

European badger mass depends on sex, population and season, so a single European range would mislead. In a study of 37 wild badgers at Wytham Woods, mean adult mass was about 8.8 kg in summer, 8.24 kg in autumn and 9.61 kg in winter [S4]. This is an animal with a powerful bite that defends itself fiercely, so a dog entering the sett had to be small, brave and stubborn.

Standardisation

The first breed club, the Deutscher Teckelklub, was founded in Berlin in June 1888; today the organisation is called Deutscher Teckelklub 1888 e.V. [S3]. Coat and size varieties were formalised gradually over the following decades.

Three coat varieties are recognised today: smooth (Kurzhaar), long-haired (Langhaar) and wire-haired (Rauhhaar) [S1]. The popular attribution of specific ancestors, spaniels for the long coat and schnauzers and terriers for the wire coat, is left out as a hypothesis without sufficient support in breed club sources.

The three size varieties are decided by chest circumference measured at 15 months or older. The current FCI standard gives separate ranges for males and females and contains no weight limits at all [S1]:

Variety	Males	Females
Standard	over 37 cm up to 47 cm	over 35 cm up to 45 cm
Miniature (Zwerg)	over 32 cm up to 37 cm	over 30 cm up to 35 cm
Rabbit (Kaninchen)	27 cm up to 32 cm	25 cm up to 30 cm

Three sizes times three coats gives nine varieties. The dachshund is also the only breed making up the whole of FCI Group 4 [S1][S5].

In pop culture

Dachshunds kept company with several well-known artists, as museum and foundation sources confirm:

• Andy Warhol had dachshunds named Amos and Archie [S6].
• David Hockney painted his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie [S7].
• Pablo Picasso lived with a dachshund named Lump, originally the dog of photographer David Douglas Duncan [S8].

We draw no conclusion about a “breed of artists” from this: three biographies are an anecdote, not a pattern.

Today

Most dachshunds are family dogs, though the breed is still used on badger and fox hunts and for tracking wounded game in countries where that is permitted. The working function remains in the current standard, which is unusual among small breeds kept mainly as companions [S1].