Road Apples
Feb. 20, 2006

Beware -- We have a dachshund, and she's loaded

By Tim Sanders

Perhaps I should preface this column by explaining the obvious, which is that most of us are not objective when it comes to ourselves and the things closest to us. Take dogs, for example. Often the same idiosyncrasies which we find annoying in other people’s canines we find endearing in our own pups.

We only have one dog in our family, a three-year-old dachshund named Maggie. Our terrier, who served as Maggie’s mentor, died last year. The terrier, Milo, was a very intelligent dog. She could understand fairly complex algebraic equations and recite most of the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Maggie, on the other hand, wouldn’t know Chaucer’s tales from Chihuahuas’ tails. She is not quite as bright as Milo was; sort of the way Danny DeVito is not quite as tall as ... oh, the Seattle Space Needle.

It’s not that Maggie isn’t talented. She can play Frisbee. Okay, she won’t leap in the air and catch a Frisbee, and she won’t fetch it and bring it back, but she will run after it, pick it up, and let you chase her all over the yard to get it back before she chews it to bits. She senses, in her own simple dachshund way, that a middle-aged man needs the cardiovascular exercise provided by pursuing a small dog around the backyard, and realizes that all of that staggering, wheezing and sweating is good for him. Indoors she has taught herself to throw a tennis ball. Mainly she flips the ball backwards over her head and then chases it. She can entertain herself for half an hour or more that way. Unfortunately, sometimes her toss goes awry and the ball lands in a trash can or on a bookshelf, and then she has no choice but to do what any serious, well-trained dachshund would do and bark at it in hopes of convincing it to come back. When that doesn’t work she will run to Mommy or Daddy and employ her ultimate weapon–the sneeze.

My guess is that somewhere in the dark Neolithic past, when feral dachshunds ran in packs, they learned that an ominous dachshund sneeze would frighten cave dwellers huddled around their campfires and persuade them to toss the dogs a piece of their woolly mammoth meat so as to avoid debilitating dachshund ankle attacks. Over the millennia the connection between sneezes and mammoth meat levitation became imprinted in the tiny dachshund mind, and even after mammoth meat was no longer on the market, the connection between sneezing and levitation remained. That is why Maggie will sneeze at a toy she may have tossed onto a shelf or chair. Gravity means nothing to her. She’ll sit on the recliner with me, pulling at the nap on her tennis ball until it resembles Don King’s head, and then when it falls to the floor, sneeze at it dozens of times in hopes of levitating it back up onto the recliner. And since I invariably pick it up and give it back to her, I guess from her viewpoint the levitation sneeze works.

Of course, if Maggie were somebody else’s dog, I would probably find all of the barking and sneezing annoying. But she is my dog, and it is charming. I also give her credit for having an excellent sense of humor, because the only time she will grab something she isn’t supposed to have is when she wants to tease us with it. It isn’t unusual to find her in the hallway, crouched down, butt in the air, tail wagging, with one of my socks in front of her. Her tiny dachshund mind is telling her, "Yeah, I may have done this a thousand times already this week, but it’ll still be a complete surprise to Daddy, and he’ll lurch down the hall after me all in a panic to save his stupid, smelly sock, and what fun that will be!" Were she to run off with any of the neighbors’ socks, I’m sure they wouldn’t find it nearly as amusing.

When I say that Maggie is intellectually challenged, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t protective of the humans in her family. When someone comes to the door, for example, she barks loudly, just in case we didn’t notice the doorbell. I believe she thinks that all visitors are plotting to steal irreplaceable family heirlooms, like her dog biscuits or her tennis balls. Whatever the case, when one of these dangerous biscuit thieves gets into the house, using the old trick of walking through the doorway, she will go into her guard dog mode. Maggie’s guard dog mode involves pacing nervously up and down the hallway, barking loudly, and eventually stationing herself bravely between my feet, so as to protect my shoes. At some point, should the evil intruder, who might be one of our friends, or possibly a relative, do something especially threatening–like speak–she will go into her advanced, turbo-charged guard dog mode. In this mode she plucks up her courage, raises her hackles, and launches herself back down the hallway at a gallop, pooping all the way to the den. Yes, despite the fact that this fine example of canine fearlessness has been housebroken for three years, when strangers threaten she will poop in the house while running at full throttle. To her credit, she does not discriminate. She will poop for old, young, large or small intruders, it makes no difference to her. You can track her by following the little doggie deposits–land mines, really–which will inevitably lead to her fall back battle station under my desk.

I have been told that dogs never forget a scent or a face, but that is obviously not true. Maggie’s little brain cannot retain the memory of faces or scents of people who visit on a regular basis. Each time they return, be it five minutes or a day later, it is an altogether new experience for her. Maggie is a very suspicious dog, and her suspicions are not confined to mere mortals. She will also bark and poop at large, dark-colored objects like garbage bags, clothes baskets and suitcases, clearly aware of the growing number of Hefty bag attacks over the past few years.

If Maggie were a neighbor’s dog, I would suggest she needed psychological help, but she is not. She is my dog, and despite a moderately low IQ – hers, I mean – I’ll stick with my contention that there’s nothing wrong with her at all.

In fact, if we are ever invaded by one of those fearsome biscuit burglars disguised as luggage, I’m sure Maggie will leap to our defense and save the day by pooping in the hallway.