Poor old dude is going hard these days. Not sure if he can hear anymore. Doesn’t seem to respond, so I hook him up to Ted The Dog with a leash when we go out for the daily Jeep And Kill ride. I can keep track of him, and when I call them, Ted can drag him to attention. He does love to go dig and hunt for the little things. He hobbles around best he can.
The Crew single out a big ol’ Greasewood bush and start digging. Tearing the thing up. It’s on, for sure. You can tell when they really got something. Don’t know who actually ‘caught’ the big old sand-rat tonight, but I know who’s jaws I had to pry it out of before he ate it (preventing a nasty, half-digested hair and bone mass later tonight). I came out of it dog-spit muddy and bloody. Turns out the blood was the pack-rats. I had to wash my hand with a beer. I know, I know…
Doxie dog! King of the Dachshunds! HDIC of The Killer Elite. Still.
Hint: Ted Dog is the one who doesn’t quite look like the others, but is pure dachshund none the less. Watch the puppy video. That is him and Trixie dancing around. Same litter.
My only defense is that I’ve been here less than 6 months. I can’t even claim my dog ate my homework…my 3 cats eat a lot of things but they try to go for the expensive or irreplaceable stuff like earring aids or diamond ear studs.
Enjoyed the videos. I’m guessing Ted is the cream and tan? What a trooper. The Digging Party was fun to watch also.
It’s true that I have a lifelong fondness for dachsunds but mostly what I love is reading your stories because you so obviously and actively love them yourself. They are a great breed and yours are great dogs. Good on you for finding them all!
I grew up with a dachshund, in the 1960’s. Just two blocks away from where I lived in the San Fernando Valley was an orange grove with a house hidden away in the back. Out front was a metal sign in the shape of a silhouette of a dachshund with the words Heying-Teckel on it. I had heard they bred dachshunds there.
We bought our dachshund from some random person in the Valley who had some dachshund puppies to sell. We got the pedigree papers. I looked at them once. There were a bunch of Heying-Teckel dachshunds in his lineage. I knew nothing about this at the time, being just about 8 years old or so.
Many many years later, in a city far far away, I got talking to someone who told me that Heying-Teckel dachshunds were a world-famous champion bloodline, including the renowned Falcon of Heying-Teckel.
A whole page on the Heying family story:
I grew up on Bracken Street just two blocks from there.
That orange grove is long long gone and is now just another tract of single-family houses.
I named our dachshund Doxie, after a like-named character that I had seen in Saturday morning cartoons. I have since thought, if I had known, I’d have named him Event Horizon of Heying-Teckel.
As he grew older, he had back problems, as many dachshunds do. He transiently lost the use of his hind legs. He learned to get around by pulling himself around by his front legs, dragging his butt on the floor. And he was in some pain, whining often. But several times, we took him to the vet where he got a shot of something (cortisone I suppose) and when he got home, he was running around again just like a puppy. For a while anyway.
One of my upstairs neighbors has a mostly dachshund, and he mostly loves people unless he doesn’t. He thinks I’m a friend - he barks then races towards me dragging his owners behind- - when he sees me, which I am, but for some odd reason, though he’s only seen him a couple of times, adores my father.
He’s also always happy to tell the other dogs in the complex what he’s thinking “dead! You’re dead! I’m going to destroy you!”
Yeah, Doxie had the back issue and was paralyzed for a few weeks, but made a miraculous recovery. I used to have to take him out, hold his back end up by the tail and literally squeeze the piss out of him.