Today, the Wesminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens in New York, but dachshund owners like myself aren’t holding their breath – our beloved hot dogs, our weiners, our salchichas, whatever you call them, have not won this most prestigious of canine contests in more than 100 years.And that’s okay by me. While the wire fox terrier may be adored by the judges at Westminster (the breed has won more than a dozen “Best of Show” awards, more than any other), no dog has been more widely loved by writers and artists than the dachshund. ("Lump," or "Rascal" / Pablo Picasso)
The list of famous authors who owned a dachshund is - pun gleefully intended - long: Vladimir Nabokov, Anton Chekhov, P.G. Wodehouse, E.B. White. And if we consider the painter and the novelist to be of the same breed, then we can add to the list Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, both of whom were doxy
owners.John Wayne was also an ardent dachshundist. Also, a guy named Marlon Brandon. Finally - and not to pile it on here - JFK, who bought "a dachshund of great beauty" in Germany.
(JFK with dachshund / and plenty of other useful information via The Long and Short of it All)Perhaps the most feline of all dogs in its temperament, the dachshund is the perfect writing companion: sensitive, complex and, above all, thoughtful. They are not the socialite golden retriever, nor the macho bulldog, nor the eternally energetic beagle. They are not prissy like poodles. They won’t hunt like real hounds. They are thinking, pensive creatures.
And like writers, they can be both prissy and stubborn, selfish and saturnine. Given its elongated back, the dachshund has a fragile constitution – an artistic constitution, one might say.
Particularly rich is Nabokov’s description of his mother’s dachshunds at the beginning of “Speak, Memory,” the memoir of his Russian childhood:
“Few things are left, many have been squandered. Have I given away Box I (son and husband of Loulou, the housekeeper’s pet), that old brown dachshund fast asleep on the sofa? No, I think he is still mine. His grizzled muzzle, with the wart at the puckered corner of the mouth, is tucked into the curve of his hock, and from time to time a deep sigh distends his ribs. He is so old and thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside.”
So, apparently, when Nabokov’s memory speaks, it is with a doxy’s wheezing. Elsewhere in that book, he recalls his mother’s “particular fondness for brown dachshunds,” an affection that seems to have been passed on to her literary son.
Nabokov’s compatriot, the playwright Anton Chekhov (right, with dachshund), a doctor by trade, named his dachshunds Quinine and Bromine. Here is his recollection of those creatures, who seem somewhat more energetic than the average weiner:“The dachshunds have been running through all the rooms, being affectionate, barking at the servants. They were fed and then they began to feel utterly at home. At night they dug the earth and newly-sown seed from the window boxes and distributed the galoshes from the lobby round all the rooms and in the morning, when I took them for a walk round the garden they horrified the farm dogs who have never seen such monstrosities. The bitch is nicer than the dog...But both have kind, grateful eyes.”
P.G. Wodehouse, the great British humorist, owned a dachshund named Jed. Like his master, Jed’s girth indicates that he led a life of comfort.
Perhaps what has attracted all these writers to the dachshund is its inate inquisitiveness: low to the ground, with an excellent nose and a propensity to burrow (the dachshund was originally bred to hunt badgers), the dachshund is eternally curious about the world. Like any great writer, it has an ineradicable desire to always dig deeper – for badgers, for sublime truth.
Perhaps the most famous American owner of the dachshund is “Charlotte’s Web” author E.B. White, who seemed to understand the breed’s persistence, intelligence and sensitivity. “I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a dachshund to heed my slightest command,” he once said. Then there is his famous dachshund poem:
The Dachshund’s affectionate,
He wants to wed with you:
Lie down to sleep,
And he’s in bed with you.
Sit in a chair,
He’s there.
Depart,
You break his heart.
And, perhaps because of their distinctive personalities, dachshunds often appear in fiction: from the “dropsical dackel” of a neighbor spotted by Humbert Humbert in “Lolita” to Sherman McCoy’s Marshall, with whom he famously struggles in the opening of “The Bonfire of the Vanities.”
It must be said, unfortunately, that the titular character in Chekhov’s “Lady with Lapdog” owns a Pomeranian.
Dachshund ownership remains popular with today’s writers. Though Susan Orlean’s most recent book, "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend” was about the famous German Shepherd, she is herself a dachshund owner.
So is Gary Shteyngart, who makes routine references to his dachshund on Facebook and Twitter. One picture of the handsome golden longhair had this cryptic caption from Shteyngart: “Overfed holiday daschund [sic] hit by stray round of klonopin. Merry holidays, everyone!”
Several days later, Shteyngart told me over Twitter: “i am a dachshund.” It’s not a Westminster “Best of Show,” but I’ll take it.
(Gary Shteyngart with his dachshund Felix)