Local authorities want to ban dachshunds in the country, claiming that the breed has a “skeletal anomaly.”
In February 2024, a new draft law on animal protection was published. Most of the measures in the law are aimed at regulating online animal trafficking and taking action against the illegal trade in puppies. However, the draft law also suggests that taxis may soon be outlawed in Germany, the Daily Mail reports.
The German Dog Breeders’ Club (VDH) has filed a petition to save “our beloved dogs,” arguing that the law leaves too much room for interpretation in defining what constitutes a genetic defect. Dog breeders fear that their dachshunds may be banned because of their short legs and elongated spines, which make them vulnerable to back problems.
The fact is that, according to the draft law, dachshunds fall under the definition of dogs with “skeletal anomalies.” The text of the document refers to the prohibition of breeds with peculiarities, such as spinal problems associated with short legs and back length, which means that it actually refers to dachshunds in particular.
The petition of the German Dog Club has already collected 12,500 signatures. The authors of the petition fear that if the new animal rights law is passed, many healthy dog breeds may be banned in Germany.
The document lists various characteristics of diseases that can lead to a ban on breeding healthy dogs. The authors of the petition believe that this can be avoided if many of these characteristics are clearly described – currently, according to the VDH, some of them are “ambiguous and vague.”
It is worth noting that among the features specified in the law are:
- abnormalities of the skeletal system;
- movement disorders;
- lameness;
- lack of hair;
- shorter life expectancy.
For their part, the authors of the petition believe that the concept of “skeletal system abnormalities” is too vague – according to the VDH, it can be interpreted as a ban on breeding “any significant deviations in size.”
This definition also includes dachshunds, which are characterized by short legs resulting from a genetic disorder known as chondrodysplasia, a type of dwarfism. It is known that dachshunds were specially bred with short legs so that they could climb through thickets and burrow into the ground to hunt badgers.
At the same time, representatives of this breed often suffer from a displacement of the intervertebral disc, which can be caused by the disproportion between short legs and a relatively long spine. As a result, animals can develop lameness. As a result, last year, the animal rights organization Peta called for not buying dachshunds because of their health problems, which can also include arthritis.
