24: Saint Louis Longcoat Dachshund
State: Missouri
AKA: American Dachshund, Gunslinger Dachshund, Dustercoat, Lodendackel (German)
History: Okay, the Saint Louis Longcoat Dachshund does not really have a long coat. Rather it has a distinct black or dark brown spot covering its back that makes it look like the dog is wearing a longcoat, riding coat or 'duster'. As the longcoat was also a very popular item for horsemen, in particular rangers and cowboys, the dog was nicknamed '
gunslinger' pretty much from the start.
The typical '
longcoat' pattern first emerged quite randomly among the dachshunds that the German, mostly Bavarian, settlers brought with them to the Missouri valley as badger- and other vermin chasers. By the time the first German breweries began to appear in Saint Louis, owners had already begun to deliberately breed the pattern into their dogs and before long the longcoat dachshunds had surpassed the original German one-color dachshunds in popularity among the Saint Louis citizenry. Somehow dachshunds, beer and German-ness just seemed to fit together and in Saint Louis the Longcoat gave the whole a nice local, American twist.
(This beer is my master's... Saint Louis about 1895...)
It helped that the Anheuser Brewery adopted the longcoat very early on as part of their advertising and thus the dog was spared from the association with Germany that plagued all other Dachshund breeds in the Anti-German backlash following WWI.
Features:
The Longcoat is a typical dachshund in appearance: long snout, long back and short legs. The 'coat' or 'duster' ranges in color from reddish brown to black and covers the neck, back and typically the top half of the front and back feet. Snout and belly are usually light brown or grey. Overall the fur is short haired.
The front feet are short but muscular and very well adapted to digging. Unlike the regular shorthair dachshund, the tail has a distinctive 'wedel' or 'fan' of long hair.
Behavior: From his origins as a burrowing dog used to flush out badgers and other underground vermin from their nests, the Longcoat retained his keen sense of smell and occasionally can be used as a drug-sniffing dog. However due to going into holes and burrows on its own, the dog also has large streak of autonomy and often will refuse orders that go against its own better judgement. It is said that a longcoat is 'managed' rather then trained or that he is the perfect dog for cat people...
Another trait associated with its ancestry is its love for burrowing: blankets, linnen baskets or teddy bear collections: a longcoat that can cover itself in it is a happy longcoat and longcoat owners quickly learn not to leave their work clothes on the bed but to immediately put them in a dirty clothes bin that has a lid on it.
Popularity: Being essentially an American dog, the Longcoat Dachshund is about equal in popularity with the regular shorthaired and wire-haired dachshund in the US and Canada. The dog being featured in Anheuser beer advertisements, even today, does of course help in no small part. Popularity however differs by region: In Saint Louis and in general on the whole upper Mississippi and Missouri river area almost every dachshund is a longcoat. The breed is also very popular in Minnesota, both Dakotas and for some reason the Napa region in California. It is virtually inexistent in New York, Boston and the Gulf Coast.
Outside of the North American continent, the Longcoat still remains a curiosity, nowhere in numbers comparable to the 'traditional' dachshunds. One exception however is Germany where the 'longcoat' recently gained a solid fan base. Most famously German actor Götz George owns a longcoat dachshund named '
Shimanski' after his character of the same name, a tough-as-nail detective wearing a trenchcoat. As there exists in southern Germany a traditional coat called a Lodenmantel, comparable to a duster or longcoat, the dog is semi-officially named '
Lodendachshund' or in short: 'Lodendackel'.
In other countries the breed is mostly referred to as the '
American Dachshund'.