Dachshund Trivia
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58 free Dachshund trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Dachshund trivia quiz digs into the badger dog from every angle: what the name means and why Germans say Dackel, the 18th-century 'badger crawler', the crook-legged ancestors that were twice the size of today's dogs, and the deliberately bred ears and tail. There are questions on the three coats and three sizes (including the FCI's rabbit-sized kaninchen and unofficial 'tweenies'), colours and dapple genetics, and the stubborn, rash temperament that E. B. White found untrainable. History and culture get plenty of room: Queen Victoria's fondness, 'liberty hounds' in World War I, Rommel and the Kaiser's pheasant-killing pair, Waldi at the 1972 Munich Olympics, wiener racing and earthdog trials, and the health facts every owner should know about backs and discs. Then the famous dogs and owners: Picasso's Lump, Chekhov's Bromide and Quinine, Warhol's Archie and Amos, Jack Ruby's Sheba, Grover Cleveland, Adele's Louie, Obie, Slinky Dog and Valerie of Kangaroo Island. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Dogs and Basset Hound quizzes next.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Dachshund is German for what?
Badger dog
Badger dog is the literal meaning, from Dachs, badger, and Hund, dog: the breed was developed to hunt badgers and other burrowing animals below ground.
Q 02In modern Germany, what short name is most commonly used for the Dachshund?
Dackel
Dackel began as a southern German short form of Dachshund and is now the everyday word, so the name English speakers treat as thoroughly German is the less common one in Germany.
Q 03The Dachshund's short legs come from which inherited condition?
Chondrodysplasia
Chondrodysplasia, a dwarfism that shortens the long bones, gives the Dachshund its legs; an extra copy of the FGF4 gene, a retrogene, drives it in short-legged breeds.
Q 04The miniature Dachshund was bred to hunt what?
Rabbits
Rabbits were the quarry the miniature Dachshund was bred for, with a chest small enough to follow them into their warrens, while the standard size took on larger burrowing game.
Q 05What is the Dachshund commonly nicknamed in the British Isles and Australasia?
Sausage dog
Sausage dog is the everyday nickname in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, earned by the long, low body; North Americans prefer wiener dog, after the frankfurter.
Q 06Which British monarch was famously enamoured of Dachshunds?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria was especially fond of the breed, kept at royal courts across Europe; British royals were probably among its first owners in Britain, where the German hunting dog became a household pet.
Q 07The gene 'dachshund', whose mutants grow shortened legs, was named by scientists studying which lab animal?
Fruit fly
Fruit fly geneticists described it in 1994: flies with no working copy grow shortened legs and no eyes at all, and a matching human gene, DACH1, is named after it.
Q 08Anti-German feeling in which war led American owners to rename their Dachshunds 'liberty hounds'?
World War I
World War I made anything German suspect: owners took to calling their dogs liberty hounds, sauerkraut became liberty cabbage, and many American Dachshund kennels stopped breeding.
Q 09Wirehaired Dachshunds often come in a grizzled coat colour named after which animal?
Wild boar
Wild boar is the breed standard's name for a coat in which each hair is banded light and dark, giving a grizzled look; it is one of the most common colours in wirehaired Dachshunds.
Q 10Which of the three Dachshund coat types is the oldest?
Smooth-haired
Smooth-haired is believed to be the original coat, and the other two grew out of it: wirehairs from crosses with rough-coated terriers, longhairs from selective breeding or, in another account, spaniel crosses.
Q 11The rough-coated Dachshund may have been crossed with which hard-coated breed?
The Schnauzer
The Schnauzer, once known as the Wire-haired Pinscher, is one suspected ancestor: breeders are thought to have crossed earlier Dachshunds with it and with Dandie Dinmont Terriers to get the harsh coat.
Q 12Which German field marshal of World War II was known for keeping Dachshunds?
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel, the 'Desert Fox', was known for keeping Dachshunds; the breed had long served political cartoonists as shorthand for Germany itself.
Q 13At the 1972 Munich Olympics, which race followed a course shaped like the Dachshund mascot?
The marathon
Q 21Dachshund puppies bred from two dapple parents, known as double dapples, are prone to which problems?
Blindness and deafness
Blindness and deafness are the risk when a puppy inherits the dapple gene from both parents, with some born with small or missing eyes, so careful breeders never mate two dapples.
Q 22What is the German name for the smallest Dachshund size, recognised by the FCI but not in the US or UK?
Kaninchen
Kaninchen is the smallest of the FCI's three sizes, below the standard and the Zwerg, or dwarf, which matches the miniature; American and British clubs recognise only the larger two.
Q 23What are Dachshunds too big for the miniature class but smaller than most standards unofficially called?
Tweenies
The marathon course traced the mascot's outline through Munich: runners set off at the back of the neck, circled the head, legs and belly to the tail, then ran along the back into the stadium.
Q 14What was the name of the Dachshund mascot of the 1972 Summer Olympics?
Waldi
Waldi was the name of the 1972 mascot, a dachshund in pastel stripes chosen for the breed's reputation for stamina; Schuss, a skier figure, had served Grenoble 1968 only unofficially.
Q 15Which designer, also behind the Lufthansa logo, led the team that created the 1972 Olympic Dachshund mascot?
Otl Aicher
Otl Aicher ran the Games' design department and handed the mascot to a young colleague, Elena Winschermann, whom the IOC credits as its creator; a real dachshund, Cherie von Birkenhof, was the model.
Q 16Which two colours were kept off the 1972 Olympic mascot's stripes over Nazi associations?
Black and red
Black and red were vetoed by the Games' design chief as colours tied to the Nazis, so the mascot's stripes came in pastel blue, green, yellow and orange instead.
Q 17The 1972 Olympic Dachshund mascot stood for endurance, tenacity and which third athletic quality?
Agility
Agility completed the trio the organisers saw in the dachshund, a favourite pet in Bavaria, which is why the breed was picked; about two million of the mascots were sold.
Q 18The US and UK class the Dachshund as a hound, but how does the FCI classify it?
In a group of its own
In a group of its own: FCI Group 4 holds only the Dachshund, whose three sizes and three coats make nine varieties, while American and British clubs show it with the hounds.
Q 19What are the Dachshund's front paws, larger than its hind paws, built for?
Digging
Digging is the job: the breed standard asks for full, tight front paws with tough pads, larger than the hind pair, and they push the soil behind the dog as it tunnels toward its quarry.
Q 20The spotted Dachshund pattern called dapple goes by which name in collies and Australian Shepherds?
Merle
Merle is a pattern rather than a colour: patches of the coat are lightened at random, like a sponge dabbed over wet paint, and it can appear on any Dachshund colour.
Tweenies have no class of their own: at American shows a miniature must weigh 11 pounds or under, so a 14-pound dog competes as a standard beside rivals twice its weight.
Q 24In the 1989 animated film All Dogs Go to Heaven, what is the name of Charlie's nervous Dachshund sidekick?
Itchy
Itchy Itchiford, voiced by Dom DeLuise, is the anxious but loyal best friend who helps Charlie break out of the dog pound at the start of the film.
Q 25Some kennel clubs, such as Germany's, separate miniature from standard Dachshunds by measuring what?
Chest circumference
Chest circumference is the test in FCI countries, since a small girth is what lets the dog squeeze into burrows; the AKC sorts miniatures by weight instead, at 11 pounds and under.
Q 26Which New Yorker essayist said he would rather train a zebra than get his Dachshund Fred to obey?
E. B. White
E. B. White wrote that he never had to raise his voice or his hopes with Fred, who 'even disobeys me when I instruct him in something he wants to do'.
Q 27A 2008 University of Pennsylvania study rated which breed, like the Dachshund, unusually aggressive toward both people and dogs?
Chihuahua
Chihuahuas and Dachshunds both scored high for aggression among 33 breeds; the authors warned that bite statistics flatter small dogs, because a big dog's bite is likelier to need medical attention.
Q 28The AKC standard calls the Dachshund 'courageous to the point of rashness' and any display of what a serious fault?
Shyness
Shyness is the fault: the standard wants a dog that is clever, lively and bold enough to face its quarry head-on underground, with no room to turn around.
Q 29The Dachshund's long spine makes it prone to which condition, affecting about one in four of the breed?
Intervertebral disk disease
Intervertebral disk disease strikes about a quarter of Dachshunds because their discs tend to harden early; the calcification is highly heritable, so Finland and the UK screen breeding dogs by X-ray.
Q 30In 2014 a Dachshund puppy called Mini Winnie became Britain's first dog produced by which technique?
Cloning
Cloning gave Winnie, a 12-year-old Dachshund from London, an exact genetic copy of herself as a puppy; the South Korean lab's procedure was priced at £60,000.