Raise a calm, house-trained dachshund in your puppy's first year

Imagine your dachshund's first birthday

• You sleep through the night, and so does your dog.
• Your dog goes to the door when it needs to go out, and the rug has been clean for months.
• The doorbell rings and you get one bark instead of ten minutes of it.

You've probably tried hard to get this right already

You read the books, joined the dachshund groups, and asked the breeder, the vet and the neighbor with the old dachshund. Everyone told you something different, and most of it sounded sensible.

• Start potty training on day one. Or wait until twelve weeks.
• Use a crate. Or never use a crate.
• Put ramps everywhere. Or let them jump.

Owners describe it like this:

And somewhere around the fifth puddle, a thought creeps in: maybe dachshunds really are just too stubborn.

Your dachshund isn't too stubborn. The advice is arriving in the wrong week.

Dachshunds were bred to go underground on their own and make decisions down there without anyone telling them what to do. That independence is what the breed was made for. Pressure tends to make a dachshund dig in, and a good reason to cooperate works much better.

The second part is timing. A puppy's first year runs in windows, and the same advice works in one and falls flat in another:

1. The first three months are the most important time for socialization, according to the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior. What your puppy meets calmly now is much less likely to frighten it later.
2. Around four to six months the adult teeth come in. Chewing is a need then, not bad behavior.
3. Around eight months comes a teenage phase. In a study of 285 young guide dogs, they listened to their own person less at about eight months, and by twelve months they were back to normal or better. It's the "back to square one" moment so many owners post about.

Potty rules that work at fourteen weeks are too much at nine. Meeting new people is easy at ten weeks and much harder at six months. So the question that helps is a small one: what does my puppy need this week?

Introducing

The First-Year Dachshund Plan

It's built on the Right-Week Method: one short page for every week until your puppy is 16 weeks old, then one for every month until the first birthday. Each page has three parts:

• This week: what's going on with your puppy at this age
• Do this: one thing, about five minutes a day
• Watch for: the one sign that means something needs attention

You don't have to plan anything or read a whole book. You open the page for your puppy's age and do the one thing on it.

There is no version of this plan for any other breed. We only do dachshunds.

One of the 17 pages

What each stage covers

Back-safe habits run through every stage: carry your puppy on stairs and don't let it jump down from the sofa, bed or car while it's growing.

Who's behind this

I'm Nils. My family had a dachshund for about twelve years, and our own puppy, a black and tan smooth-haired girl born in August 2026, came home this October.

When she was nine weeks old, we sat down and wrote ourselves a plan for her first year: 54 pages on what matters at which age, what to do that week, and when something is a job for the vet. We wrote it for her first.

The First-Year Dachshund Plan is that plan, rewritten for other dachshund owners and shaped around the questions they actually ask. We went through 963 of their posts to find out where people get stuck.

I'm not a vet or a trainer. This plan puts what vets, breed experts and researchers say into the right order, one week at a time.

Why it's $27

A good puppy class costs around $120 for six to eight weeks, and owners say it's worth it. One wrote: "The 6-8 week class will cost about $120 but worth every penny." A class gives you one hour a week. This plan covers the other days, through the whole first year.

30-day money-back guarantee

If the plan doesn't help you and your puppy, send one email within 30 days and you get every cent back. No questions asked.

Plus three printables

1. The Fridge Pages. Every stage on one printable page, so the whole family knows this week's one thing.
2. The Back-Safe Home Check. Stairs, sofa, bed and car, checked in ten minutes, based on the UK Dachshund Breed Council's advice.
3. The First Three Nights. What to do when your puppy cries in the crate, hour by hour.

It works for your dachshund if

• yours is a miniature or a standard
• the coat is smooth, long or wire-haired
• this is your first dachshund, or your first puppy in years
• you live in a house with a garden or in an apartment with stairs
• you work and your puppy has to stay alone for a few hours

Questions owners ask

My puppy is already five months old. Is it too late?

No. You start at the page for your puppy's age, and the plan tells you which earlier steps are still worth catching up on.

Isn't this just general puppy advice with "dachshund" on the cover?

No. Some of the guides you'll see in your feed are sold in the same format for a dozen different breeds. Advice that has to fit a Labrador, a Pug and a German Shepherd at the same time ends up general. This plan only exists for dachshunds and is built around what's different about them: a hunting dog that decides for itself, a long back, a small bladder and short legs that don't love wet grass.

Miniature or standard?

Both, and all three coats.

Is this veterinary advice?

No. Every page says when something is a question for your vet, and back pain always is.

How do I get it?

The weekly pages for weeks 8 to 16 come as a PDF right after you buy, for your phone and for printing. The monthly pages for months 5 to 12 follow by email, one each month.

What if it's not for us?

Send one email within 30 days and you get your money back.

Your puppy is only this age once

If you've read this far, you want to get this first year right. Start with the page for your puppy's age and the one thing on it.