Over the span of more than a few decades of voracious reading, admittedly more in science fiction and fantasy, but also in other fiction genres, including, horror of horrors, standard literature, I’ve occasionally run across dogs, but never across a dachshund. I searched Amazon and B&N and found exactly one “adult” book featuring a dachshund, and a few children’s books, and I had to wonder about the absence of dachshunds, those fiercely loyal protectors of those they love.

At times, they can be too fiercely loyal, because we’ve seen dachshunds go after German shepherds, horses, elk, and deer, not to mention unwanted or unannounced intruders. Yet they’re usually portrayed, when portrayed at all in other media, as comical “weiner dogs” or ferocious ankle-biters.

As some of my readers know, I have upon occasion committed fictional dachshundry, that is, included a dachshund in my work, three of them in fact, if one reads closely. The latest commission of that literary crime was a short story – “The Unexpected Dachshund,” which appeared in Instinct: An Animal Rescuers Anthology, published in 2023.

That story was inspired by our latest and youngest dachshund, who turned out to be very unexpected in more than a few ways, which I’ll not detail here, except to say that he continues to display the unexpected, both in similar and in different ways than Rudy, “The Unexpected Dachshund” of the story.

Earlier, in Haze, one of my hard SF novels, I also included Hildegarde, one of our earlier dachshunds, or actually a painting of her, as a silent companion to Major Keir Roget, as well as one other dachshund, in his efforts to bridge more than a few gaps between disparate future cultures.

So… why aren’t there more dachshunds in fiction?