Why Are Dachshunds So Hard to Potty Train?

Dachshunds have a notorious reputation for being difficult to house-train. Some of it is deserved. Some of it may have more to do with the way we understand the breed than with any inherent inability to learn where to pee.

There is a particular genre of dachshund lore that tends to emerge whenever owners get together. Someone mentions house-training, everyone laughs knowingly, and eventually a dog is described who seemed perfectly aware of the household rules but chose, with apparent deliberation, to ignore them.

It is easy to see why the reputation has endured. Dachshunds are independent, extraordinarily interested in whatever their noses happen to find, and not always inclined to abandon an investigation simply because a person standing nearby has decided it is time to go to the bathroom. Add rain, cold grass or an unsupervised room with a good rug and the familiar dachshund mythology begins to write itself.

The interesting question is whether they truly are biologically harder to house-train than other dogs.

The answer is less satisfying than the folklore: possibly, but we don't have especially good evidence proving it.

There is research suggesting that breed can influence behavioral traits, and the American Kennel Club describes dachshunds as intelligent but notably independent dogs whose hunting heritage can make them more interested in a scent or potential quarry than in whatever their person is asking them to do.

But the scientific literature does not give us a tidy finding that says dachshunds, as a breed, are destined to be bad at house-training.

What we know much more clearly is that house-soiling is rarely as simple as a dog being “stubborn.”

Start with the dog the dachshund was designed to be

The modern dachshund may spend considerably more time negotiating access to a human bed than pursuing anything underground, but the breed’s original job required a very particular kind of temperament.

The Fédération Cynologique Internationale’s official breed standard still describes the dachshund’s purpose as a hunting dog working above and below ground. Its history traces back to dogs selectively bred for hunting underground, where they needed to follow scent, enter confined spaces and continue working without a person beside them directing every move.

That history doesn’t mean your dachshund is refusing to pee because an ancestor once hunted badgers. But it does help explain a breed that tends to be persistent, scent-driven and unusually comfortable making its own decisions.

For more on how that working history shaped the modern dachshund, see How the Dachshund Became the Dachshund.
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For house-training, those characteristics can matter.

Imagine the ordinary morning outing from a dachshund’s perspective. You have gone outside for one very specific purpose. Your dog, meanwhile, has discovered evidence that another animal walked along the hedge sometime overnight. There is a bird in the neighboring yard. Something interesting appears to have happened beneath the deck. The grass is wet.

Your priorities are not necessarily aligned.

This is one reason I would resist using “stubborn” as the entire explanation for dachshund behavior. It describes how the interaction feels to us without telling us very much about what is happening for the dog.

A dachshund who becomes absorbed in scent, dislikes the conditions outside, has been given too much freedom indoors or simply hasn’t developed a strong enough habit of eliminating outside can produce exactly the same result as a dog who supposedly “knows better.”

The difference matters because those are problems we can actually work with.

And then there is the weather

Dachshund people joke about rain because dachshunds have given them ample material.

There isn’t, as far as we know, a body of research demonstrating a uniquely dachshund genetic objection to relieving oneself in inclement weather. We shouldn’t invent science where it doesn’t exist.

We can, however, acknowledge anatomy.

A dog with only a few inches of clearance between its underside and the ground experiences wet grass rather differently from a taller dog. The chest and belly brush through damp vegetation; cold or rainy conditions can make the entire outing less appealing. Some dachshunds seem completely indifferent to this. Others behave as though stepping onto a wet lawn constitutes an unreasonable request.

If your dog falls into the second camp, rainy days require more consistency, not less.

That might mean going outside with the dog rather than opening the back door and hoping for the best, finding the least objectionable sheltered potty spot, or simply accepting that the process may take a little longer when the weather is unpleasant.

What doesn’t help is allowing a dachshund to come inside after accomplishing nothing and immediately disappear unsupervised into another room.

That is less a failure of character than a loophole.

What actually works is not particularly glamorous

The strange thing about house-training is that the advice with the least novelty tends to be the advice that matters most: establish a routine, supervise closely, prevent accidents when possible and reward the behavior you want while the connection is still obvious to the dog.

The AKC’s dachshund-specific puppy guidance recommends beginning house-training as soon as a puppy comes home, using a regular schedule and returning to the same outdoor area while generously rewarding success.

More general AKC house-training guidance boils the process down to two ideas — scheduling and supervision — which is perhaps less exciting than discovering a secret breed-specific technique but much closer to how dogs actually learn.

There is even research showing how much owner behavior matters. In a study of newly adopted shelter dogs, owners who received brief house-training counseling were significantly more likely to report their dogs successfully house-trained a month later than owners who did not receive the counseling. The dogs hadn’t changed breeds or personalities. Their humans had simply been given better information.

For a dachshund, that means making the successful behavior unusually clear.

Take the dog outside rather than merely putting the dog outside. Wait long enough to know whether anything actually happened. Reward immediately after the dog eliminates, not several minutes later once everyone is back in the kitchen. Until the habit is reliable, gradually expand freedom inside rather than assuming a few accident-free days mean the project is complete.

A crate, pen or gated area can be useful here — not as punishment, but as management. Puppies cannot make bad decisions in rooms they cannot access.

And previous accident sites need to be cleaned thoroughly, ideally with an enzymatic cleaner, so an old bathroom doesn’t continue advertising itself as an entirely reasonable place for a repeat visit.

None of this makes for a revolutionary training hack.

That is probably why it works.

Why punishment tends to make the problem worse, not clearer

An accident discovered after the fact can feel surprisingly personal, particularly when it occurs somewhere the dog very obviously should not have been.

But bringing a dachshund over to yesterday’s mistake and scolding them does not explain the household rule. From the dog’s perspective, the event you are angry about is already over.

There is also broader reason to favor reward-based training. Research comparing training approaches has found greater stress-related behavior and higher post-training cortisol responses among dogs trained using more aversive methods.

Other behavioral research has also associated confrontational training techniques with a number of unwanted behaviors, including house-soiling in some contexts.

That doesn’t mean every stern “no” traumatizes a dog, nor does it mean positive reinforcement magically produces a house-trained puppy overnight. It means punishment is a poor substitute for teaching a dog what does work.

If you catch an accident beginning, calmly interrupting and going outside gives the dog another chance to get it right.

If you find the evidence later, clean it.

The teachable moment has already gone.

Not every accident is a house-training accident

This is one of the most important distinctions, particularly with an adult dog.

A puppy who has never been reliably house-trained and a six-year-old dachshund who suddenly begins urinating in the house do not have the same problem simply because the end result looks similar.

A review of more than a thousand cases seen through Cornell University’s Animal Behavior Clinic found incomplete house-training to be the most common diagnosis among dogs referred for house-soiling, but separation anxiety was another frequent contributor. Most of the incompletely house-trained dogs for whom follow-up information was available improved with treatment recommendations, which included behavior modification.

House-soiling can also have medical causes. A sudden change in a previously reliable dog’s bathroom habits is a reason to talk with a veterinarian, particularly if it comes with increased frequency, straining, unusual thirst, gastrointestinal changes, discomfort or other changes in behavior.

Context is often more informative than the accident itself.

Does it happen overnight? Only when the dog is alone? Primarily during rain? In one particular location? After a change in routine? Is this a puppy still learning, an adolescent testing its newfound freedom, or an older dog who was previously completely reliable?

The answer changes what you do next.

Perhaps dachshunds are not impossible. They are just very good at exposing inconsistency.

This may ultimately be the less dramatic explanation for their reputation.

Dachshunds tend to be independent enough that vague expectations do not get you particularly far. They are persistent enough to repeat behaviors that have worked before and observant enough to discover inconsistencies in a household routine remarkably quickly.

If going outside occasionally results in a treat but urinating behind the dining table results in nothing at all, both options may remain perfectly viable from the dog’s point of view.

If whining at the door in the rain reliably results in being allowed back inside, that behavior has been rewarded too.

And if three successful days earn immediate access to the entire house, we may be asking a very young habit to survive quite a lot of temptation.

None of this means dachshunds are easy to house-train. Some genuinely take longer than their people expect, and living through that stage can test even a very affectionate relationship.

But there is something reassuring about separating the dachshund legend from what we actually know.

Your dog is probably not standing on the antique rug making a calculated statement about authority. They are learning a rule that makes perfect sense to humans and very little inherent sense to dogs.

Dachshunds simply have a way of making sure we teach it properly.