Be More Sausage

‘In short, the sausage dog will tackle any task wholeheartedly, but only if it chooses to do so.’

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‘Is your puppy motivated by food or toys?’ asked the trainer earnestly. She had approached me with a felt python in one hand and some kind of treat holster slung around her waist. I glanced down at Hercules. He looked up at me as if I should know the answer.

‘Toys?’ I said with little conviction. I just figured that, had the question been asked about me, I wouldn’t want people to think I was ruled by my stomach.

The trainer considered me for a moment. Her eyes narrowed.

‘Let’s try a biscuit,’ she suggested, positioning herself midway across the room.

For a good minute, I watched as the trainer held out her treat and made encouraging noises at my sausage dog in vain. Then she tried to coax him in the same way but with the soft toy snake.

Hercules regarded her as if she’d lost the power of adult speech.

‘We’re going to need a bigger biscuit,’ I joked feebly.

‘Hercules can just watch the others,’ she said, which sounded like face-saving to me. ‘He’s just nervous.’

For a young pup allegedly suffering from self-confidence issues, Hercules seemed miraculously cured when it came to going home. He walked to heel on a loose lead, head held high as he cut a path through the other puppies as if they’d never progress beyond chasing their own tails.

On the second visit to puppy training, I was wise to the fact that Hercules knew exactly what was being asked of him. At home that week, hanging out with the family, I had witnessed him perform all the basic tasks with ease. Our sausage dog could wait on command, sit and steer clear of Sesi if she was in a mood. The only difference was that he elected to do them on his own terms. If he wanted to sit, then he’d do exactly that. He’d also respond to his name as long as it suited him. When commanded, a selective deafness kicked in, and that would only deepen if anyone chose to really test him on it.

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Returning to class, Hercules metaphorically tossed the teacher a bone by sitting for a tasty treat, only to rise as she turned away and shoot me a look as if to inform me that his formal education was now at an end.

I didn’t give up on lessons because my sausage dog was a lost cause. On the contrary, he could already perform the tasks required of him. If anything, attending those two sessions had taught me that a dachshund is very different from any other breed, and thrives on being handled accordingly. Unlike other dogs, it wasn’t a question of issuing instructions at him. Instead, if I wanted Hercules to do something, I got the best results by levelling with him and then seeking some kind of compromise.

‘I know it’s raining,’ I said as we pulled up outside the house after our final time at dog school. ‘It’ll take all of thirty seconds to hop out of the car and get inside the house … OK, what if I carry you? Is that all right? Yes, I’ll be quick …’

So, the dachshund is a working dog. I just had no desire for Hercules to seek gainful employment. My priority was for him to fit around my working day, and this is where the sausage dog comes into his own. In fact, so long as nobody else is around to cast judgement, I discovered that the breed makes the ideal office colleague. Over the years I have learned a great deal from Hercules’s outlook on the nine-to-five grind. While any badgers in the woods nearby can sleep safely in their setts, the contemporary dachshund has evolved to boast a skillset suited for the modern age …

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