ALL ABOUT LIVING WITH DACHSHUNDS
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(dog barking)
(upbeat music)
– [Oscar] Hi, my name is Oscar Martinez
and I have two miniature
long-haired dachshunds.
– [Jenevive] Hi, my name’s Jenevive.
I have two short-hair dachshunds.
– [Laurel] And my name’s Laurel Mullally.
And I have two dachshunds;
one wired-hair and one long-hair.
(gentle music)
– They are really great pets.
They tend to bond with one or two people
so they’re always wanting to cuddle,
they follow you from room to room.
They always want to be wherever you are.
And, yeah, they’re funny;
they do funny things.
They’re like little clowns.
– Living with dachshunds is really fun.
They’re very affectionate.
They have a lot of energy,
so if you’re one that likes
to go hiking, running, walking,
these are your go-to dogs.
– My father owned a dachshund and
I just kind of fell in love with them.
And then when it came time
to get a new dachshund,
or a new dog, we decided
to get a dachshund.
It fit in our house.
We needed to get a small breed,
and we were just already
fond of the breed.
(gentle music)
– So dachshunds are considered hounds.
They’re short-legged hounds.
And the first time they were recorded
was in the medieval times.
The first time it was
used, the term dachshund,
was in Germany around the 1500s,
which dachshund means badger hound;
dachs being the German word for badger,
and hund being the word for hound.
They were standard dachshunds
so they were a little bit bigger.
There’s two sizes of dachshunds,
so there’s the standard and the miniature.
Standard dachshunds are the
size of European badgers.
And badgers are pretty fierce animals.
So the dachshunds were bred to be fierce
just like the pray they were hunting.
I know that the first dogs that were bred
were smooth-haired dachshunds.
And they believe they were
bred down from Bassett Hounds.
And then afterward came
the wire-haired dachshunds
that was mixed into terrier
dogs to get that wire coat.
And so you have dogs that are hounds
but also terriers in a way.
And then you also have
the long-hairs that came
closer to the 1900s, I believe,
that were bred with spaniels
to get the long coat.
In Europe there’s three sizes,
which would be a rabbit-sized dachshund,
which one of my dogs in kinda considered
that size.
And the standards were
used to hunt badgers,
track deer, and track boar.
They were pack animals,
kinda like beagles.
So they’d send them out in packs
and they’d go out hunting.
And the reason why they’re so long
was ’cause they wanted them
to fit into the burrows
of the badgers to take them out of there.
And it kinda makes them
very tenacious and very
brash to the point of…
they’re just completely sometimes…
just, they don’t care how crazy it is.
They’ll go against anything.
And then later on they were bred down
to miniature size to hunt rabbits, vermin,
and things like that.
(gentle music)
In the standard, the AKC and the FCI,
which is the European,
I guess, continental
registration of animals, of dogs,
standard dachshunds are
considered to be 16 to 32 pounds.
Miniatures are considered 8 to 11 pounds,
and then rabbit-sized are
anything up to 10 pounds.
– We live in a large
house, 3,000 square feet,
three stories, but we don’t have a yard.
So we have just a large patio.
And we realized that because
of the lack of the yard,
we needed a smaller breed animal.
My dogs, we have the two dachshunds.
And then my parents live with me,
and we also have a Lhasa Apso.
So they all get along.
We live in Fullerton where
there are coyotes outside,
so our dogs are not outdoors
without being supervised.
– [Jenevive] We do live
in a home out in Gardena.
We do have a backyard; however,
we have a pit bull at home
who she’s like an old lady.
She’s friendly, but
she doesn’t really like
the puppy energy, so we keep
our two dachshunds indoors.
And there we have a pretty large room,
where they get to roam
around the house freely
and in our bedroom as well.
– I live in Hawthorn, California.
And we live in a two-bedroom,
two-bathroom apartment.
And I live with my sister and her fiancé.
We all live together and we have Chili,
who’s a long-haired dachshund,
we have Pepper, another
long-haired dachshund,
and we have Charlie,
who’s a little Yorkie mix.
And we all live there.
We’re nice and cozy.
The dogs love it.
They don’t really need so much space.
When we are at family members’
houses that have yards,
they run around, they get
tired, they come back inside.
And they just retreat to the couch.
So that’s where they like to be;
on the couch, on your
bed, anywhere with you.
(gentle music)
– Yes, so we do take our
dachshund on walks daily,
preferably up at around 6:00, 7:00 p.m.
when we get home from work.
During the day they literally just sleep
and just roam around.
They don’t really get
into much, thankfully.
But aside from that,
they’re pretty much home all day inside.
And then, like I said,
we’ll take ’em on walks
or if there’s activities going on,
like dachshunds activities,
like wiener races,
or if we have meetups.
I know we’ll meetup sometime
here and then as well.
So that’s pretty much our daily go-to.
– So we do not take them
to any AKC field trials
or anything like that.
But we do let them run around in parks
where there’s squirrels.
And they love treeing squirrels.
We’ve never trained them
to actually alert us
that they’ve treed a squirrel.
But as good hounds that they are
they’ll tree a squirrel,
they’ll sit and they’ll howl
and they’ll bark until we get there.
And then they’ll run circles around it
to let us know that they’ve
done something right.
And we’ll try to pull them away
and they will just go
find another squirrel.
They’re just that tenacious.
They’ll see crows, they’ll see birds,
and they’ll want to go get them.
And their ears perk up,
their tails go high,
their little paw comes up.
It’s almost Pointer-like, but not really.
They don’t actually point.
They just put their paw up and they know
that they’re ready to do stuff like that.
They were bred to hunt and to track.
But since we live in a metropolitan area
where we don’t have access
to any field trials.
My sister’s fiancé hides treats.
And then one by one, they go
out and find these treats.
And they just go around sniffing
every part of the apartment
until they find all the treats
they’re supposed to find.
(gentle music)
– Well, we love to participate
in is the wiener races.
And one of my dogs, her name’s Penny,
she’s a smooth red, she is just fast.
She loves to run.
Ever since we got her
when she was a puppy,
she would just book it.
We have a thing where we
trained her when she was little.
We say, “Ready, set, go” and
when she hears that word go,
she just takes off.
So we use that as a…
to help her in the races.
So that’s one of the thing
we love to participate in
is the wiener dog races.
It’s just so much fun to
watch the dogs go and race,
and just be a part of the community.
– Well, I think that they
don’t need a lot of space.
I think as long as they
get adequate exercise,
my dogs are confined to 1,000
square foot apartment area
during the day, but they
get two walks a day.
And they’re small so they
don’t need a lot of space.
– For the dachshund breed, one
of the main health concerns
is IVDD, which is
Intervertebral Disk Disease,
which means that they
can hurt their spine.
So if they fracture it, it
can basically disconnect
and they’ll become paralyzed.
And in some cases like that
they’ll have to use little
wheelchairs or little
wheels that they’ll use.
But in our house, my
boyfriend built us a ramp.
So he made it so he could
put his shoes in there
and it’s just basic wood ramp.
And they just climb up and down the bed.
Since our bed is pretty high,
I’m not sure exactly the height,
but it’s like this big, this high.
And they can easily break
their backs off of it.
And they have fallen off, but
luckily they’ve been okay.
But it’s very important to have a ramp
or maybe train them to not
jump on and off furniture
because they can really hurt themselves.
(gently music)
– Well, for us, we live
on the second floor
of an apartment building.
And so every now and
then, we will let them
run up the stairs.
But we usually have to carry them up.
And of course dogs, they don’t
realize that they have this
sort of genetic
disadvantage for themselves.
So they don’t understand
that jumping off the couch
or jumping off the bed is wrong.
Chili loves jumping but we have to always
prevent him from that because
sometimes you’ll hear him jump
and you’ll hear a loud thud,
and you’re like, “That can’t be right.”
And so we have to prevent
them from doing that.
And something else for
dachshunds that is they…
well, for the long-hairs
they have long coats.
But anything that’s too
hot or too cold can be,
especially for the short-hairs,
can be pretty negative for them.
Chile and Pepper are pretty attached to us
so they always want attention.
But luckily, our work
hours in my household
is very convenient.
They are never alone for
more than an hour or two.
– [Laurel] And in our household,
my parents live with me.
So they have contact with
humans all 24 hours a day.
– Oh, and in my household,
I work from home partly,
so I am with the dogs
when I am working.
Or if I do take off,
we have a little place space for them.
So they have a crate with their bed,
they have their little pee mats,
just because we don’t have
access to the backyard.
They stay there.
They’re good for about four hours,
or even eight if I’m at work
for a full eight-hour shift.
(gently music)
So we have a few rules for them.
For our dachshunds, one of the
main rules is to obviously,
not jump on and off the bed.
Couches, we can’t really
prevent that because,
like he mentioned, it’s
hard for them to realize
what they’re doing is wrong and right.
But another rules is also
to not tear their beds.
Mila, one of our
smooth-haired, the piebald,
she’s infamous for tearing her bed.
So what we do is, I’ll supervise him with
their bed that they have
next to ours at night.
But then when we’re not
around, they sleep in the crate
and they have blankets there.
So she will dig little
holes and makes holes.
But it’s fine; they’re just blankets.
– It was already stated, they love to eat.
So trying to keep the dogs
separate during eating time
because this dog will just
dive into the other dogs’ food.
And they’re not big eaters.
So we have to kind of
separate them at meal time.
– In my household, there’s a couple rules.
One is that they’re not
allowed in the kitchen.
They like to beg for scraps
or just while we’re cooking.
So they’re not really allowed in there
because they’re really small
dogs so you can trip on them.
And you don’t wanna have
to be cooking, turn around,
and drop some scalding
hot liquid on your dog.
It wouldn’t be a good thing.
(gentle music)
When people come over, we have the rule
that they don’t approach
the dogs too quickly.
Specifically, I’ve
noticed with my long-hairs
and other people’s long-hairs,
is they’re a little shy and timid at first
once someone has entered the apartment.
They’ll bark at them outside.
But once they’ve come in,
they are a little shy.
And so you coming too strong scares them,
and then they don’t trust you.
Also not picking them up
because most people don’t know
how to pick up a dachshund.
You don’t just pick it
up like a regular dog
since they have a long back.
Just picking them up from their front legs
or from the upper portion of their body
puts a lot of pressure and a
lot of strains on their backs,
which again, may bleed into
that IVDD precautionary
kind of
situation.
The only precaution is
with maybe bigger dogs.
Dachshunds are pretty brave
so they’re not scared of other dogs.
But something like a Husky or something
that’s very active might
hurt them if they’re playing.
I mean, the dachshund won’t back down.
But, for example, my
parents have a Rat Terrier
and he’s not any bigger than they are.
But he hurts them a lot
’cause he’s just bouncing off the walls,
pulls their ears, pulls their tail.
And they don’t like it,
and they’re just a lot lower
to the ground; a lot longer.
He pushes them and they
fall over and it’s just…
yeah, you just gotta be careful with them
because again, their back,
it’s a pretty serious issue.
(funky music)
– I started off with my first dachshund
and I wanted another one.
I feel like dachshund are like fries,
you can’t just have one.
– [Laurel They’re all very different;
different personalities.
But they’re very enduring, very loyal,
and very affectionate.
– Seeing them today,
you see the differences
between a smooth-hair,
you see the difference between the wire,
and you see the difference
between the long-hair.
I think I’ll always have dachshunds.
I eventually wanna have at
least one of each variety.
(funky music)
– I mean, they’re all beautiful dogs.
They’re all beautiful
dachshunds and it’s just,
it’s a huge community
and it’s really great
to be a part of it.
(“Sweat On Me” by Tape
Machines featuring Vicki Vox)
♪ I won’t make it easy for you now ♪
♪ You got two minutes of my time ♪
♪ And I don’t really
break through easily ♪
♪ But I’m worth it ’cause ♪
♪ I’ll slip into your dreams tonight, Oh ♪
♪ So gimme, so gimme your all ♪
♪ I’ll take it, I’ll take it to Mars, Oh ♪
♪ I’ll stick like glue inside your mind ♪
♪ Just watch me break in your sweat ♪
♪ You’re falling into me ♪
♪ Touch me ♪
