Those of you who were reading my blog around this time last year probably remember that we finally had our elderly dog put to sleep because she started to smell like the plague. We got a new one, a really great poodle from a poodle rescue center (yes, they specialize now), and the only thing that made him really great was he knew not to get his leash wrapped around mailboxes when we would go for a walk. This Mensan of a dog could look at an object and decide to go around it without me having to drag him by the neck. It doesn’t take much to make me happy. I got a bathrobe and an office chair for Christmas, I’m kind of low maintenance that way.

I didn’t write about it at the time because I was still on the verge of throat punching people, but our great Mensan poodle was stolen back in the fall. I couldn’t very well go tell the poodle rescue people that I managed to lose a dog WHILE I WAS HOME and I needed them to give me another one, so I went to the local regular dog rescue and had to take whatever they had. Unfortunately, they had no poodles, but they did have a Dachshund.

I really should have paid better attention to the fact that they were way too excited about getting this dog a home. They offered to deliver it. Only now in hindsight is that making alarm bells go off. But it didn’t look like any of those wretched things on the Sarah McLaughlin commercials so I thought it would be a good pet for us. Well, that and the fact that this dog was on clearance. I’m a sucker for anything on sale.

This is possibly the stupidest dog alive. Forget learning any commands in human language, I’m not even sure this dog speaks dog. I’ve pulled this tiny animal out of our toilets and trashcans more times than I care to think about, especially when I see it licking my husband’s face. No, wait, that’s actually kind of funny.

The really sad thing about the dog is the fact that it looks like it was made from parts of other dogs. It’s legs are obviously too short because it’s a Dachshund, but it’s back is also too long, it’s head is so big compared to its body that it has trouble keeping its ears off the ground, and it trips on its own horrifically long tail a lot. This thing looks like someone’s idea of a genetic joke. There’s something so galactically wrong with it that I’m not even sure I should be capitalizing the name of its breed.

I knew there had to be a purpose for this breed besides “court jester,” kind of like how retrievers bring things back and collies keep things in a circle, so my brother Googled it for me. Sit down for this one: Dachshunds were bred for their ability to keep badgers away.

If I am ever in danger from a badger attack, say, while waiting in the carpool lane at my kids’ school, all I have to do is whip this stupid thing out of my purse and those badgers will tuck tail and run. I’m envisioning ruffian Vikings going on midnight pillaging runs with Dachshunds strapped firmly to the front of their armor to ward off the unsuspecting town’s badger defenses.

Since obviously the Dachshund can’t actually take on a badger in combat, I think the purpose for the dog was to make the badgers not want to be anywhere in the vicinity. So far the only defense mechanism my dog has in the ongoing struggle against badger attack is this unholy smell that she emits from a special anti-badger gland right on her ass. The vet keeps having to “express” it but I think he’s actually making a commercial-grade badger defense spray out of the foul-smelling ooze that goops out of her. I can already testify that it is effective in keeping one’s family members away, which is reason enough for owning a stupid wiener dog.