How to Stop Your Toddler from Accidentally Breaking a Baby Dachshund

I was halfway through a tepid cup of Earl Grey when I saw it happening in slow motion. Twin A, my slightly more chaotic two-year-old, was attempting to swing her leg over a visiting twelve-week-old sausage dog like she was mounting a coin-operated pony outside a supermarket. I abandoned my tea, my dignity, and the general concept of gravity, diving across the sitting room floor to intercept her just before she squashed a creature whose spine is roughly the length and structural integrity of a damp spaghetti noodle.

Bringing a baby dachshund into a house that already contains human babies—or worse, highly mobile toddlers—is a big test of your reflexes. They're spectacularly incompatible roommates. One is a loud, sticky, unpredictable force of nature that drops food and runs with heavy feet. The other is a tiny, tubular badger-hunter with a notoriously fragile back and zero tolerance for nonsense.

When my mate asked me to look after his new baby d for the weekend, I assumed it would be fine. I've kept twin girls alive for two years, after all. But trying to manage the interaction between a human baby and a dog shaped like a draught excluder quickly taught me everything I was doing wrong.

The catalog of absolute disasters

Because I learn everything the hard way (usually while apologising to someone or panic-buying floor wipes), I spent the first twenty-four hours making every mistake you can possibly make with a tiny hound in a child's environment.

• Letting the girls pick him up: Toddlers lift things like they're participating in the World's Strongest Man competition—mostly by the neck, with sudden jerky heaves. We learned very quickly that this is basically a fast track to the emergency vet.
• Leaving the Moses basket on the floor: If you're bringing a newborn home to a dachshund, don't put your lovely wicker basket on the rug. Sausage dogs are pathologically nosy. Within three seconds, the dog was trying to scale the side of the basket to inspect the screaming potato inside it, nearly tipping the whole contraption over.
• Assuming they would share toys: A wooden block to a baby is an educational tool, but to a hound, it's prey that must be destroyed.
• Misinterpreting the warning signs: I thought the dog yawning meant he was tired, but apparently it means he's stressed out of his mind because Twin B is staring at him unblinkingly while holding a mashed banana.

What eventually stopped the crying

After nearly having a heart attack watching the girls chase the dog under the sofa, we had to implement some severe tactical changes. It turns out you can't reason with a two-year-old, and you certainly can't reason with a baby dachshund.

The only thing that worked was physical barriers and the strictest household legislation I've ever passed. We started using the baby's playpen, but in reverse. We put the girls inside the playpen with their toys so the dog could wander the room without being squashed. My vet—a thoroughly exhausted man named Hugh who looks like he needs a month in Tenerife—told me that managing the environment is pretty much the only way to keep a small hound's spine intact around small children.

The architectural nightmare of the sausage back

Let's talk about the spine for a minute, because this is the bit that keeps you awake at night. According to Hugh, dachshunds are genetic architectural anomalies. He threw some acronym at me—IVDD or something to that effect—which basically means their spinal discs have a terrifying tendency to slip, bulge, or explode if they jump off a sofa or get dropped by a toddler.

Their backs are apparently held together by hopes and prayers. You hear "don't let the dog jump," and you think, sure, I'll train him not to. But a baby d doesn't care about your rules. They think they're invincible flying tubes. If they want to get off the sofa, they'll simply launch themselves into the abyss like a furry torpedo. We ended up having to buy little foam stairs for the furniture, which my toddlers immediately repurposed as a slide, entirely defeating the object.

We had to enforce the Lap Rule. This means if a child wants to pet the dog, the child must be sitting flat on their bottom on the floor. No carrying. No scooping. No walking around with the dog tucked under an arm like a baguette. If you're standing up, you don't touch the hound.

Badgers and why we brought hunters indoors

I can't stress enough how bizarre it's that we keep these animals in our houses. Dachshunds were originally bred by the Germans to flush badgers out of their underground burrows. Have you ever seen a badger? They're massive, furious, stripey tanks with claws like garden forks. They terrify me. And yet, humans looked at a badger and thought, "Yes, let's breed a dog the height of a skirting board to go down a dark hole and fight that."

Because of this history, a baby dachshund has an absolutely mental prey drive. They're hardwired to chase anything that moves quickly and erratically. Do you know what moves quickly, erratically, and makes high-pitched squealing noises? A human toddler.

When my girls start doing their manic little run-waddle across the kitchen, the dog's badger-hunting instincts activate immediately. He assumes they're giant, slow-moving prey and tries to nip at their heels. It's not malicious, he's just genetically programmed to corral them. We had to spend hours teaching the girls to stand completely still and pretend to be trees whenever the dog got overexcited, which is incredibly difficult to explain to a two-year-old who just wants to run away.

Someone on an internet forum told me I should be feeding the dog a raw diet of quail eggs and venison to calm his prey drive, which I ignored completely because I barely have time to make my own children toast in the morning.

The great teething toy battle

If you've a baby and a baby dog in the same house, you'll quickly discover that their accessories are practically identical. Both species require soft blankets, chewable objects, and things to catch their bodily fluids.

My girls are still getting their back teeth in, which means we rely heavily on Kianao's Panda Teether. I genuinely love this thing. It's made of food-grade silicone, it's easy for them to hold, and it stops them from chewing on the coffee table. But here's the tragic reality: a baby dachshund looks at a silicone panda and sees a premium squeaky toy that you've generously bought just for him.

I spent an entire afternoon playing a ridiculous game of fetch where I'd retrieve the panda teether from the dog, wash it in the sink, hand it back to the screaming twin, only for her to drop it on the floor where the dog would immediately steal it again. It's a fantastic teether for humans, but you've to guard it with your life if there's a hound in the vicinity.

The same goes for clothes. We dress the girls in these lovely Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuits. They're brilliant because they don't aggravate my daughter's mild eczema, and the snaps actually stay closed when she throws a tantrum in the supermarket. But dog hair clings to organic cotton like magnetic shavings. I've surrendered to the fact that until the dog leaves, my children will look slightly fuzzy.

(If you're trying to prep your house for the chaotic arrival of either a baby or a puppy, do yourself a favor and stock up on things you can throw straight into the washing machine. You can browse Kianao's organic baby blankets here.)

Never tell them off for growling

This was perhaps the most counterintuitive thing Hugh the vet told me. If the baby d growls at your toddler, your first instinct as a parent is to tell the dog off. You want to shout "No!" and assert dominance, or whatever it's the men on television tell you to do.

Apparently, this is incredibly dangerous. A growl is basically the dog using its words. It's the dog saying, "I'm extremely uncomfortable with this sticky human poking me in the eye, and if they don't stop, I'm going to have to bite them." If you punish the growl, the dog learns that warning you is bad. So the next time they're uncomfortable, they won't bother growling—they'll just skip straight to biting.

Whenever the dog growled at my girls, instead of telling the dog off, I had to physically remove the twin. I spent my weekend saying things like, "The dog has requested some personal space, please step away from his tail," to a toddler who barely understands English.

The five minute attention span

Training a puppy alongside raising a baby is an exercise in futility. The AKC or someone similar says you've a tiny window—between three and twelve weeks—to socialize a puppy before they become permanently terrified of the postman.

You're supposed to expose them to different sounds and sights. I figured a house with twins provides enough auditory trauma to socialize a dog for a lifetime. But their attention spans are absolutely nonexistent. You get about five minutes of focused training before their brain switches off and they wander away to chew on a skirting board.

We used to have this stunning Rainbow Play Gym Set set up in the living room when the girls were smaller. It's this gorgeous wooden A-frame with little hanging animals. It was perfect for the babies because it didn't play obnoxious electronic music. But if you put a baby d anywhere near it, they assume you've built them a bespoke agility course. The dog spent twenty minutes trying to fight the wooden elephant while I tried to coax him away with a bit of cheese.

honestly, keeping them both alive just requires constant, exhausting vigilance. You will buy too many gates. You will wash too many teethers. You will intercept toddlers mid-air. But when they finally fall asleep on opposite ends of the sofa, it's almost, sort of, worth it.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to manage the teething and the chewing and the general destruction of your living room, make sure you've got the right gear to keep your human baby distracted while you deal with the hound. Explore Kianao's wooden play gyms and soothing essentials here.

The extremely tired dad's FAQ

How do I stop the dog from jumping on the baby's playmat?
You buy a playpen with very tall sides, and you put the baby in it. The dog will still sit on the outside staring in like he's watching television, but at least he can't trample the baby while chasing his own tail.

Should I let the dog lick my newborn's face?
I asked my health visitor this, and she looked at me like I was insane. Dogs eat things off the pavement that I don't even want to think about. A quick sniff of the baby's toes is fine, but keep that tongue away from your infant's face unless you want to spend the weekend Googling mysterious rashes.

My dachshund puppy bites my toddler's ankles when they run. What do I do?
This is the badger instinct kicking in. You have to teach your toddler to "be a tree" (stand still, arms tucked in, looking away) which makes them boring to chase. Then you redirect the dog with a toy. It takes about four hundred repetitions before anyone actually does it.

Will the dog eventually calm down around the kids?
Probably. Or you'll just get used to the chaos. But they do get better once the puppy teething phase ends and the kids get old enough to understand that the dog is not a piece of furniture you can sit on.

Is a baby carrier safe around a jumping dog?
It's actually brilliant because it keeps the baby completely out of the strike zone. Just protect your knees, because a dachshund jumping up to investigate the baby strapped to your chest will absolutely headbutt your kneecaps.