Part 2 of the Dachshund Puppy Series
Missed Part 1? Read Raising a Dachshund Puppy After 11 Years: What I Forgot first.
If you made it through the first few weeks of puppyhood and you’re still standing — congratulations! Genuinely.
Because Part 2 is where things get spicy.
The potty training is becoming more predictable. The routine is starting to click. And then your sweet, tiny, butter-wouldn’t-melt dachshund puppy looks you directly in the eyes and bites your hand like she has a personal vendetta.
Welcome to the dachshund puppy biting phase.
In this post I’m covering everything I dealt with during Lucie’s biting and teething phase — what triggered it, what actually helped redirect it, which toys survived her, how leash training progressed, and the early signs of separation anxiety I started noticing and addressing before they got worse.
Why Dachshund Puppies Bite (And Why It’s Not Personal)
First — the biting is normal. It doesn’t mean your puppy is aggressive. It doesn’t mean you did something wrong. It means they are a puppy.
Dachshund puppies bite for a few specific reasons:
Teething. Just like human babies, puppies lose their baby teeth and grow adult teeth — and their gums hurt. Biting provides relief. This phase typically runs from around 3 to 6 months old and it is relentless.
Overstimulation. Remember the 45-minute chaos cycle from Part 1? When puppies hit that peak energy window, their impulse control is essentially zero. Everything becomes a target — including your hands, ankles, and anything you’re wearing.
Play behavior. With their littermates, biting was how puppies played. Your puppy hasn’t learned yet that humans don’t work that way.
Attention-seeking. Dachshunds figure out very quickly that biting gets a reaction. Even a negative reaction is attention. And attention is what they want.
Understanding why they’re biting makes the redirection strategy much clearer.
What Actually Helped Redirect the Biting
The goal isn’t to punish biting — it’s to redirect it consistently until the puppy learns what IS acceptable to bite.
Here’s what worked for me with Lucie:
Immediate toy swap. The moment she bit my hand, I said “no” firmly — once — and immediately replaced my hand with a chew toy. Every single time. Consistency here is everything. If you swap toys six times and then let it slide on the seventh, you’re back to square one.
Freeze and ignore. When the biting happened during play, I’d go completely still and stop all engagement. No reaction, no eye contact, no movement. For a dachshund who wants your attention, nothing is more annoying than being ignored. After a few seconds, redirect to a toy and re-engage.
Timeout in the crate. When overstimulation was clearly the cause — when she was zooming and biting everything in sight — I’d put her in the crate for a 10–15 minute rest. Not as punishment. As a reset. Overtired, overstimulated puppies cannot learn. They need to crash before training means anything.
Bitter Apple spray. For furniture, shoes, and things that couldn’t be moved — Bitter Apple spray was a lifesaver. Dachshunds hate the taste. A couple of encounters with it on the furniture legs and she moved on quickly.
The one thing I’d caution against: using your hands as toys at any point during this phase. It’s tempting when they’re tiny and it seems cute, but it teaches them that hands are for biting, and unlearning that is much harder than never teaching it.
Chew Toys That Actually Survived Lucie
I went through a lot of toys before finding ones that held up. Dachshunds are shockingly strong chewers for their size and the dachshund biting phase is brutal on soft toys and cheap rubber toys. If they are not well-made they didn’t last more than a day or two.
What worked:
Hard rubber chew toys (Kong-style). The Kong Classic stuffed with a small amount of peanut butter or kibble became one of Lucie’s favorites. It keeps them occupied, satisfies the chewing instinct, and the hard rubber is nearly indestructible.
Nylon chew bones. These are designed specifically for aggressive chewers and last significantly longer than standard rubber toys. Lucie would settle into a 20–30 minute chew session with these, which was genuinely a gift during work hours.
Rope toys (supervised only). Rope toys are great for interactive play and tug games — but I only used them with direct supervision. Dachshunds can pull pieces off rope toys and swallow them, which is a hazard.
Frozen toys. During the peak teething weeks, I started freezing a damp sock and giving it to her. The cold soothed her gums almost immediately. Simple and free.
Squeaky Toys: These are hit or miss. If they are cheap, she can rip into them quite quickly, and goes for the plastic squeak apparatus, which gets chewed up into a million pieces, and of course, she wants to swallow everything! My hand and fingers have done quite the deep dive into her mouth, fishing things out! Her favorite squeak toy is a small lamb (Lambchop) and surprisingly has lasted with squeak intact.
The key lesson: rotate toys constantly. A toy that gets ignored one day becomes exciting again two days later. Rotation keeps the novelty alive without constantly buying new things.
Check out what’s in our current toy rotation on the Doxie Essentials page.
Leash Training Progress: Where We Actually Were at This Point
In Part 1, I talked about Lucie’s early confusion with the harness and leash. By the time we hit the teething phase, we’d made real progress — but it wasn’t linear.
Here’s an honest account of where things stood:
The harness became routine. After two weeks of wearing it every day, she stopped scratching at it. The trick was putting it on even when we weren’t going outside, just around the house for short periods, so she stopped associating it only with the outdoors and just accepted it as normal.
Leash walking is still a work in progress. Lucie mastered the zig-zag. She’d walk three steps in my direction, then pivot toward a leaf, then stop completely to stare at something invisible in the distance. Oh, and boy, she is a lounger! She loves to just lounge on the grass, roll in it, bite, smell it, and dig it! Everything but walk in it! I’ve learned that this is completely normal dachshund behavior. Their noses are powerful, and the world is distracting.
What helped: keeping early walks very short — 5 to 10 minutes maximum — with zero pressure to cover distance. The goal was building the habit, not the mileage. Dachshunds are notoriously stubborn; if they don’t want to walk, well… they won’t! Lucie will literally sprawl out, legs out behind her, and I’m like “oh, we’re going out for a drag today!”
One word of caution: Don’t force or pull them to walk. It will turn into a bad experience for both of you! Not to mention possibly hurting them. I make sure I take her favorite treat to coax her, and she usually gets up and moves.
The “heel” concept was introduced slowly. I’d stop walking every time the leash went taut — not jerk it back, just stop completely. She’d turn, look at me, and I’d praise and continue. Over many repetitions, she started understanding that pulling stops the walk.
Never use a retractable leash during this phase. I mentioned this in Part 1 and I’ll say it again — retractable leashes give too much freedom before a puppy understands leash boundaries. They also make it nearly impossible to teach proper heel behavior.
A properly fitted harness is still non-negotiable for dachshunds at every stage. I have our top pick listed on the Doxie Essentials page — it’s the one I trust for spine and neck safety.
Early Signs of Separation Anxiety — And What I Did
This is something I want to address early because if you catch it at the puppy stage, it’s manageable. If you let it develop unchecked, it becomes a much harder problem to untangle.
Lucie started showing mild signs around week three:
- Whining when I left the room
- Following me everywhere, including the bathroom
- Becoming increasingly restless when she couldn’t see me
- Crying in the crate when she knew I was still in the house
None of this is unusual. Dachshunds are famously velcro dogs. But there’s a difference between normal attachment and anxiety that interferes with their ability to be calm and independent.
What I did immediately:
Practiced short departures. I’d leave the room for 30 seconds, return calmly, and give no dramatic greeting. Then one minute. Then five. Building tolerance to being alone in very small increments. The key is returning before she reaches full panic — keeping the experience neutral and predictable.
The crate is a calm zone. I reinforced the crate as her safe place during this period. When she was calm in the crate, she got low-key praise. I’d sit nearby while she rested in it so she associated it with my presence — not just with me leaving. I am lucky to work from home, so her crate is behind me as I work. For working dog parents who do not have this luxury, try to practice this routine on weekends, so they start to associate the crate with their own personal space. Lucie has gotten to the point that when I am working, she calmly goes right into her crate and brings along any toy she wants to play with and before i know it she is fast asleep – a win-win any day of the week!
No dramatic goodbyes. This one is hard emotionally, but important. Big farewell productions increase anxiety. Walk out calmly, return calmly. The less theatrical the departure, the less loaded it becomes.
The Snuggle Puppy at night. Still using it. Still working.
The honest reality: Lucie still prefers to be wherever I am. That’s a dachshund. But she can now settle in her crate while I work without escalating into distress — and that’s the goal.
Coming Up in Part 3
Next in the series I’ll cover:
- Socialization — people, dogs, environments
- First vet visit and what to expect
- Introducing basic commands
- Managing the dachshund’s stubbornness during early training
- What I’d do differently if I were starting over
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