01/12/2025
The Dachshund: The Canine Hell Gate Bridge...
The Dachshund has to be one of our favorite breeds to use as an illustration of form following function, and with this post, we touch briefly upon the breed’s chest.
Dachshunds were bred to “go to ground,” and that means furiously digging towards prey that’s often an ill tempered badger holed up in a tunnel (or, as as D. Caroline Coile and Michele Earle-Bridges put it in their book on the breed, “35 pounds of fury in a hole”).
Breathing room? Given the tight spaces in which a Dachshund often works, not much of it, usually. The more furiously the dog digs, the more oxygen is used up, and it becomes necessary to inhale more of depleted air to support all that digging. A Dachshie’s chest, which should be oval and comparatively broad, has a long, well-sprung rib cage that gives plenty of room for heart and lungs. This allows the diaphragm to work efficiently like bellows under hard effort. The longer the rib cage, the more air the dog can move, and that same long rib cage helps support the dog’s long back.
In a wonderful piece written by Laurence Alden Horswell, he likened the dog’s design to, “box girders under the southern approach to the New York, New Hampshire and H.R.R. Hell Gate Bridge.” We've linked to that piece on our website: https://nationalpurebreddogday.com/dachshund-the-canine-hell-gate-bridgection/
Image” “Puppy Butt” by Kimberly Santini
www.paintingadogaday.com
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