The Germans are very precise about chest measurements as they understand that for a dog to be a "gebrauchshund" (i.e. a "useful" hunting dog), it cannot be too big to fit into a tight den, nor can it be so nose-dead as to be unable to find in the field.
Along with size and nose and gameness, a German working dachshund has to show that it is also not gun shy.
For those interested in the standard for the teckel or hunting dachshund, see >> http://www.teckelklub-berlin-brandenburg.de/usa/fci/fci.html
What is most remarkable about the FCI working teckel standard is how very precise it is about chest size -- perhaps a reaction to what happened in England and in the U.S., where dachshund chest size was allowed to balloon up to the point that show dogs now have chests as deep as the keel of a boat.
As the standard posted at the web site of the Berlin Teckel Club makes clear, the ideal chest size of a working dachshund is just under 14 inches in circumference.
This 14 inch chest measurement is the same size cited as ideal for working terriers by Barry Jones in the UK (see http://www.terrierman.com/barryjones.htm and Ken James in the U.S. ( see http://www.terrierman.com/hunting.htm ), and is about the size of the average red fox chest found the world over (see http://www.terrierman.com/foxsize.htm ).
The FCI Standard for Teckel Chest Sizes:
- Standard Teckel: Chest measurement is given as exactly 35 cm, or 13.78 inches. This is about the same size chest as the average red fox.
- Miniature Teckel: Circumference of chest from 30 to 35 cm measured when at least 15 months old. This is a smaller chest size which would allow the dog to follow even a very small vixen with a chest of about 12 inches or so.
Rabbit Teckel: Chest circumference up to 30 cm measured when at least 15 months. These dogs are very small and, as their name suggests, are used for rabbiting. Many have chests that are as small as 10 inches around.
For those interested in working dachshunds in North America, see:
http://www.teckelclub.org/hunting-with-dachs.htm.
A book some might find of interest is "The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age" by Harriet Ritvo [Harvard University Press, 1989] Ritvo points out that the Dog Show crowd and the Animal Rights crowd spring from the same root-stock of sentiment, and in both cases the animals are the side-show, not the main event. Ritvo writes that in the Victorian era and into the 20th Century dog show folks "elevated standards that had no basis in nature or aesethics but reflected the ignorant, self-interested caprices of fanciers who wished to boost the prestige of their own stock in order to associate themselves with people of good breeding." And, of course, it paid, with show winners being sold for cash -- a quick way for people of low rank to buy themselves up the social ladder. If one had a dog that was "best of breed," then surely the owner must be of similar worth, right?? Ritvo notes that terriers were particularly singled out for attention by the show ring preeners and pretenders, and that "'The Fox Terrier Chronicle, the only 19th Century periodical devoted to a single breed of dogs, covered the terrier elite the way that newspapers and other periodicals covered human high society." Ritvo notes that dog fanciers projected "an obsessively detailed vision of a stratified order, which sorted animals and, by implication, people into snug and appropriate niches" with dog shows offering "a dizzying range of classes and then abstracted from them a carefully calibrated hierarchy of animals, ranging from those who did not place even in their sub-breed category to the best in show." In short, the attraction of dog shows was that people who themselves were as common as a turnip top could now fancy that they were among the social elite. They did not have to have real knowledge of animals, or have an important job or title or large estate -- they just had to purchase a dog from a "reputable" show breeder and put on airs. As one Victorian periodical noted, "nobody now who is anybody can afford to be followed about by a mongrel dog." Ritvo notes that "Specialist clubs were supposed to defend their breeds against the vicissitudes of fashion, but they had few other guides in their attempts to establish standards for breeds and judges." Even in the Victorian era, almost no one walking into the ring with a "working" breed actually worked their dogs. After almost half a century of formal shows, the author of a manual for dog owners noted that "the sportsman will as a rule have nothing to do with the fancier's production." All of the above is from the Second chapter of Ritvo's book. The Third chapter is about the rise of the Animal Rights movement, and here we see the same class issues popping up that we did in the previous chapter. Just as honest working dogs were labeled "mongrels best for the dustbin," so too were the people that owned them. The analogies made were simple and direct: Course people had course dogs and engaged in course behavior. Show people had "pedigree" dogs and they did not engage in course behavior. Of course, not everything was quite as simple as this in the real world. No matter -- the goal of the RSPCA was not entirely about animals anyway -- it was in no small part all about putting down the poor and the rural and castigating them for having "undisciplined" values. Towards this end, Ritvo notes that the tracts of the RSPCA "implicitly identified the lower classes as the source of brutality," even as this same organization gave "the big wink" to fox hunting and grouse hunting which were common pastimes of the rich and landed. Today, of course, the people you see at a PETA rally and the folks that you see trotting their dogs around a show ring are not all that different demographically. In his book "In Defense of Hunting," James A. Swan notes that the Animal Rights crowd is dominated by people that are "white, urban, predominantly female, nicely dressed" and that many of them are "people who have gone through painful divorces or have had traumatic childhoods or have otherwise been hurt by the norms of society." Food for thought .... make of it what you will.
