Despite what its Kennel Club paperwork says, the wire-haired dachshund isn’t really a hound. That classification traces back to a mistranslation of the German word “hund,” which simply means dog, not hound. This breed is actually built like a terrier at heart, bred to go underground after prey and either flush it out or hold…

If you picture a dachshund, you’re probably picturing the smooth-coated kind. The long-haired dachshund is the same breed with a completely different look: silky, feathered fur instead of a sleek short coat. Underneath that fur, though, it tends to run calmer and more easygoing than its short-haired cousins. I’ve trained several of these dogs, and…

People sometimes call this breed the “cloud dog,” and one look at that pure white, fluffy coat explains why. The Japanese Spitz dog breed doesn’t just look like a small cloud — its coat is famously easy to keep clean, which is a rare bonus for an all-white dog. There’s more to this breed than…

Long before this dog became a fluffy family companion, merchants and fishermen brought it aboard their ships as a working guard dog. The German Spitz Klein, the smaller of the two German Spitz sizes, spent centuries alerting sailors to trouble on deck, and that same alert, watchful nature is still very much part of the…

Archaeologists have found spitz-type dog bones at human settlements across Central Europe dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years. The German Spitz dog breed, specifically the medium-sized Mittel variety, descends from that same ancient Nordic lineage, brought to Germany and the Netherlands by Vikings during the Middle Ages. That’s a genuinely long history for a dog…

For centuries, this dog’s job was to climb the walls of Buddhist monasteries and bark the alarm the moment a stranger approached. The Tibetan Spaniel dog breed served as a living security system for monks high in the Himalayas, and that sentry instinct is still very much alive in the breed today. Small in size…