Karl-Heinz Kraus on History

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear hunters, dear friends of our dachshunds,

Please allow me to tell you something about myself. My name is Karl-Heinz Kraus. I am 56 years old, married, I have two sons, I live in Nürnberg, and I have been a hunter for nearly 30 years. And from the time I began hunting, I have worked with dachshunds.

Two years ago, I had first contact with Mrs. Kwa and, subsequently, she has told me of the problems and difficulties there are in the States. And so we had the idea that I come to you and tell you something about dachshunds, my breeding-club, and our work with our dogs.

So, let me begin with our dachshunds.

The most usual name is "Teckel", but in the southern counties we call him "Dackel" and there is one older word, "dachshund". In most of the German hunting areas, a dachshund is available for hunting. We like him because he has an excellent nose, he is very busy in searching, and of course we like him for his bravery and bite against fox and badger. With the family, he is the best friend of children and an alert guardian of the house. If he does anything wrong, he looks at you with his dachshund eyes and he can be sure you will not be angry for long.

The dachshund is a hound, the smallest one. And as a hound, he has good Spurlaut - here is the difference from most of the earth dogs: the fine nose and the strong eagerness to work a scent line. In the classifications of different hunting dogs we find him indeed in the group of earth dogs but his characteristics are much more diversified.

Already in drawings and and stories of the ancient world we find descriptions of dogs like hounds. They had hounds in old Egypt and called him "Tikal" or "Tekal". But I don't want to say this was the hour of birth of our "teckels"! By the mariners, these dogs came to all regions of the Mediterranean. Xenophon (430-355 before Christ), was the first to tell of dogs that were loud on the track: "If the hare is rummaged, the good dog must follow him with a strong sound through thick and thin, without leaving the track or coming back to the hunter".

Then began the new and extremely intense trend of attending exhibitions. At the time, this was an advantage because exhibitions made it possible to create the breed standards. I will not appraise if they were always correct! We have many photographs from that time in which the dachshunds already had much in common with ours, although they did not have our ideals. In the year 1885, the first book about dachshunds appeared. The title of this book was "The dachshund, his history, breeding, training and use, also an essay about earth dens". The author was R. Corneli.

On page two of this book is found a dilly of a statement: "It was cultured too much to good form and too little to hunting activity". It is amazing how this matter is as true today.

Corneli was one of the first advocates for hunting with dachshunds. He very clearly tells of the situation in the 19th century. After some successes in the beginning, the breed was rather down in the years after 1848. Possibly, the only traditional breed successes were had by Wilhelm von Daacke. Corneli displayed enormous foreknowledge when he wrote in his book, on page 45: "Each hunter who has a hunting area ought to have a pair of dachshunds. They will be helpful assistants as well as acceptable companions."

He also described the global adoption of hunting with dachshunds. By the initiative of Mr. Ilgner and Earl Hahn, the Deutsche Teckelklub was founded on the 10th of June in the year 1888 in Berlin. The aim was the advancement of dachshund breeding. By planned breedings, the three coat varieties and different sizes were brought to the standard. In the year 1911, one of the important persons of this club, Dr Fritz Engelmann, wrote in the German hunting newspaper: "Dachshund breeding is breeding for hunting, must always be breeding for performance, otherwise it is not dachshund breeding".

Many decades ago the dachshund became a treasured object of hobby breeding. As he became the mascot of the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, he became a fashion dog all over the world. All dogs that looked like dachshunds were used to reproduce. Problems with character and problems with performance are the deplorable consequences to this day.

And so there have been critics of the commerical breeding of dachshunds. In 1968, Hans Lux wrote in his benchmark work about the hunting dachshund: "To be a breeder of hunting dogs, means to be a hunter. And so, it will be desirable, to separate with a sharp cut the 'non-hunting breeders' from the 'hunting breeders' and so the conformation breeders from the performance breeders."

Some history of dachshunds would not be complete if I did not speak about the miniature dachshund. In the beginning of the 20th century, some hunters came together who were engaged in hunting for rabbits. They soon discovered that the best material for breeding rabbit dogs was to be found in the dachshund breeds. In 1912, the sizes and weights for rabbit and miniature dachshunds were agreed upon.

Dr Fritz Engelmann, one of the elder breeders of hunting dachshunds said: "Put hunting away from the dachshund and you take from him the roots of his life".

For a brief history about dogs used for blood tracking:

Blood tracking has a long tradition in Europe and particularly in the German-speaking regions.

The "Leithund" existed in the Middle Ages about the time of 800 to 1800. This "Leithund" worked exclusively on cold tracks so it did not have direct contact with game and was not especially sharp. He was relatively large and heavy.

Firearms began to be used by hunters in the beginning of the 19th century. At that time, the game laws were exclusively entitled to the nobility.While game had always been caught in nets or traps and killed before, firearms produced injuries which were not immediately fatal. One now needed dogs that had the good nose of the Leithund but that were also more game aggressive and more mobile.

In Hanover in Lower Saxony, the old Leithund was crossed with other Bracken and the Hanovarian bloodhound arose. Further Bracken crosses resulted in the "Bayern Gebirgsschweisshund" or Bavarian Mountain Blood (Tracking) Dog. As heirs of the legendary Leithund, all Bracken have fine noses. The smallest type of Bracken is our dachshund which is therefore also well-suited for blood tracking.