Dachshund Separation Anxiety: What the Evidence Actually Shows
The largest study I could find on this asked 13,715 owners across 264 breeds about their dogs. Separation-related behavior turned up in 6% of them, and the breeds it named as most affected were mixed breeds and Wheaten Terriers.
Dachshunds aren’t in that finding at all, which is worth sitting with before you read any further.
That changes the first question. Instead of “how do I fix my breed’s problem,” it’s worth asking whether what you’re seeing is separation anxiety in the first place, because for this breed in particular it’s easy to get that wrong.
Two numbers that look like they contradict each other
Search this subject and you’ll meet two figures that seem to be at war.
The RSPCA puts the figure at eight dogs in ten. Its page reads: “research suggests that 8 out of 10 dogs find it hard to cope when left alone. Yet, half won’t show any obvious signs.”
The Finnish study above, Salonen and colleagues in 2020, found separation-related behaviors in 6%.
Eighty percent against six percent. So which is it?
Both, because they asked different questions. The study counted dogs whose owners reported specific behaviors happening often or very often: destroying, toileting, vocalising, salivating or panting when alone. That’s a high bar, and it measures visible distress.
The RSPCA figure is about coping, and it comes with the sentence that matters most: half of the dogs who struggle show you nothing.
Put those together and you get the useful version. Severe, obvious cases are uncommon. Quiet struggling is not.
Is it separation anxiety, or is it just a dachshund?
The ASPCA treats separation anxiety as one thing and boredom, incomplete house training, urine marking and excessive barking as separate problems needing separate approaches.
That distinction is harder to apply to this breed than to most, and here’s why. Open the AKC breed standard and you’ll find the dachshund described by its “hunting spirit, good nose, loud tongue” and its suitability for “below-ground work.”
Loud tongue means barking. Below-ground work means digging. An under-exercised dachshund alone in a house does both, and it looks exactly like a distressed dachshund alone in a house.
So how do you tell them apart? Same behaviors, different causes, and the fixes barely overlap. Boredom wants more to do. Anxiety wants a gradual reintroduction to being alone, and more to do can make it worse by raising arousal before you leave.
Clinginess confuses people too. A dachshund that follows you from room to room is doing something the breed does. It isn’t a diagnosis on its own, and owners of young dogs get this wrong constantly:
“She’s turning 4 months next week. The problem is she’s very clingy and gets anxious if she’s not near us.”
– r/Dachshund (168 upvotes). The top reply: “This is totally normal for a puppy.”
What the breed evidence actually says
The claim that dachshunds are prone to this gets repeated on almost every page about it, and no study underpins it. The citations that circulate, including a frequently quoted 2001 paper on clingy behavior, do not exist in the sources they are attributed to. They trace back to pet blogs quoting each other.
The Salonen paper is the biggest dataset available, and it names mixed breeds and Wheaten Terriers. Your dachshund’s breed is not the reason, which is better news than it sounds, because breed is the one variable you can’t change.
What does look breed-related is how the trouble presents. A distressed terrier-shaped dog barks and digs, so if your dachshund is anxious, you’ll hear about it from the neighbours.
The vet goes first, before any training
This is the part I would have skipped past, and it is the part that matters most. Why start with a vet when the problem looks behavioral?
The ASPCA is direct: “Before attempting behavior modification for separation anxiety, please see your dog’s veterinarian to rule out medical issues.”
Toileting indoors can be a urinary problem. Restlessness and panting can be pain, and a dachshund with a sore back has a specific reason to be restless. You can spend two months on a desensitization programme that was never going to work, because the problem wasn’t in the dog’s head.
For anything beyond mild, the RSPCA sets out the route: talk to a vet who knows your dog, and they should refer you to a clinical animal behaviorist. The ASPCA adds that medication “can be very helpful, especially for severe cases,” with most dogs doing best on a combination of medication and behavior work.
I’m an owner who reads the sources, not a vet, and nothing here is a substitute for your own.
What eight weeks with Pretzel looked like
My miniature dachshund, Pretzel, could not be left. He’d start before I reached the door, and the pattern was the pre-departure anxiety the RSPCA lists rather than anything that began once I’d gone.
What worked was unglamorous and slow, and it matches what the ASPCA describes for moderate cases: very short departures, repeated, extended only when the shorter version stopped registering. Seconds at first, then a minute, then the length of taking the bins out.
The hardest part was resisting the urge to test progress by leaving for an hour to see what happened. Every time you overshoot, you’re teaching the thing you’re trying to unteach.
Eight weeks of that got him settled. I’d add two caveats before you take the number as a target. It’s one dog, and the ASPCA is clear that moderate and severe cases run to weeks or longer with no fixed schedule. If yours takes three times as long, that isn’t failure.
How long can a dachshund be left alone?
The RSPCA is specific: “We recommend that you don’t leave your dog alone for more than four hours; for puppies much less.”
I’ll be straight about where I land on that, because it’s where most working owners land. Pretzel now settles for six or seven hours, which is longer than the RSPCA advises, and I don’t think the training is what makes that acceptable.
What makes it defensible is what happens inside those hours: a midday break, someone dropping in, a walk that happens whether or not I’m running late. Training taught him the door closing isn’t a catastrophe. It didn’t shorten the day.
If you can’t arrange the break, the four-hour line is the one to plan around, and a dog walker is cheaper than a behaviourist.
Dachshund separation anxiety: what owners ask
What dog breed has the worst separation anxiety?
In the largest dataset available, Salonen and colleagues’ survey of 13,715 dogs, separation-related behavior was most common in mixed breed dogs and Wheaten Terriers. Mixed breeds tended toward destruction and toileting, Wheaten Terriers toward vocalising, salivating and panting. The authors note that shelter history is a likely confounder for the mixed breed result.
Can a dachshund be left alone?
Yes, within limits, and the RSPCA puts those limits at no more than four hours, much less for puppies. That’s a welfare recommendation rather than a legal one. Longer days need arrangements, not just a better-trained dog.
What is the 3-3-3 rule for dog anxiety?
It isn’t an anxiety treatment. The San Francisco SPCA describes it as an adjustment timeline for a newly adopted animal: three days to settle, three weeks to build a routine, three months to build trust. It’s a guideline with no research claim attached, and I go through it in more detail in the piece on dachshunds and cats.
What are the signs I might be missing?
The RSPCA’s less common list is the useful one, because these are the signs that don’t wake the neighbours: trembling, panting, excessive salivation, self-injury, repetitive behavior, vomiting, and not eating while you’re out. A camera answers more questions than guesswork.
Does crating help?
It depends on what the dog already thinks of the crate, and getting that wrong makes things worse rather than slower. A dog that panics in a confined space will panic harder in one. Neither charity treats a crate as a treatment for separation anxiety, and this is a question to put to the behaviourist rather than to the internet. For a puppy that hasn’t developed the problem yet, one study’s findings on crating at night are in the crate training a puppy guide.
Can it be prevented?
The RSPCA says separation-related behaviour “is preventable and treatable,” which is the most encouraging sentence in any of these sources. For a puppy that means building short absences in early, while being alone is still boring instead of frightening.
