Those who know me well or read this blog once in a while know that I live in a world dominated by dachshunds. Jeanne and I (and our Boston Terrier) share the house with two of them. 
Frieda is clearly the alpha of our three-dog pack—actually, she’s clearly the alpha-living-thing in the house, an extroverted diva who expects her world to work according to her agenda (and it usually does). Her agenda includes eating 24-7, being in charge of seating arrangements on all furniture items, and standing in the driver’s lap to look out the window while on a coveted automobile ride. 
Winnie is a perpetual puppy who defers to Frieda in just about everything, wants nothing more than to have her belly rubbed, doesn’t like being outside or riding in the car, and has a few screws loose that cause her to bite strangers on the foot when least expected.
Friends and acquaintances know that my love of dachshunds rivals (but does not surpass) my obsession with penguins, so they occasionally forward to my Facebook page pictures or videos they think I will enjoy. My brother, for instance, a doctor who wishes he was a cowboy in Wyoming, send me a YouTube clip of a dachshund herding cows the other day.
I absolutely can see Frieda doing that (Winnie would run and hide in the barn). It would be good for Frieda—she could stand to lose a couple of pounds.
Here are a few things you need to know about dachshunds (whether you want to or not):
- The tubular, short-legged body frame of the dachshund is a good example of what Darwin called “selective breeding”—human attempts to speed natural selection along for human benefit. Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers (hence “dachshund”—“badger dog”); their low to the ground frame made badger lairs more accessible.
- Remembering that dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers and that badgers are very nasty animals, it is not surprising that a 2008 study in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science ranked the diminutive Dachshund as the most aggressive of all breeds.
- http://www.dogguide.net/blog/2008/07/the-3-most-aggressive-dog-breeds-revealed-pit-bulls-rottweilers-youll-be-surprised/
- Dachshunds are notorious for being hyper alert. They are wary of strangers and tend to bark loudly when their suspicions are aroused. Or when a leaf blows across the lawn. Or when someone is walking another dog five blocks away.
- Dachshunds were to Queen Victoria what Corgis are to Queen Elizabeth II. That’s probably because Queen V’s husband, Prince Albert, was from Germany—where the breed originated in the middle to late nineteenth century.
- Things did not go well for dachshunds during World War I in the allied countries. Dachshunds were routinely kicked or stoned to death in the streets of England; owners of dachshunds who risked going out into public risked being labeled as German sympathizers and having their dachshunds killed in front of them.
- Dachshunds are hard-wired to burrow. Since there are few badger burrows in the neighborhood, that means under your blankets, your clothes, anything they can dig under.
They will burrow so deeply under things that they apparently have little need for oxygen while submerged.
Frieda and Winnie are great companions; Frieda, in particular, has been my tubular “Mini Me” for all of the years since she showed up in our house and decided I would be her pet human. I have learned a great deal from them about confidence and persistence. I have even learned things from the random dachshund videos my friends and acquaintances send me.
A few days ago I posted an essay called “Playing with Fire” in which I considered the tendency of the typical person of faith to be satisfied with tame and safe versions of engagement with the divine rather than risking being burned or consumed by the real thing.
In a comment, a new friend named Mitch—the new priest at the Episcopal church we attend—wrote “We certainly do want domesticated warmth; to tame the untamed God & capture the God who is known in freedom. 
Reminds me so much of Barth in this. God will do what God wants; not our will.” I hadn’t been thinking of Karl Barth when I wrote the essay, the twentieth-century Protestant theologian who, among many other things, continually emphasized that “God is God and we’re not” in his voluminous writing, but Mitch was right. His comment reminded me of something my preacher/teacher father used to love to throw regularly into a sermon or class: Barth used to dismiss the notion of “defending the faith” by asking “if you had a large and hungry lion in a cage, what would you do when threatened—stand in front of the cage and defend the lion, or open the cage door and let the lion defend itself? The lion can take care of itself. And so can God—just get out of the way.”
Which reminded me of something else. From domesticating the divine through Karl Barth to a dachshund video—pretty typical of the connections my brain makes.
Comments on Facebook ranged from “Chomp!” to “I wonder what the lion had for lunch before this—it must have been good!” and “One day that Lion’s gonna find some mustard and a bun.” But from one commenter who actually knows the story, the following:
That is Bone Digger and the puppy is Milo. Bone Digger had problems walking when he was a baby and this little dog would go and bring him his food and literally put it in his mouth. He saved this Lions life. Such a touching story. He lives at the GW Zoo in Wynnewood, OK; you can see him any day of the week.
Lions are often used as placeholders for the power and majesty of the divine; just think of 
Aslan in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or, if you would rather go secular, Simba in The Lion King. Nice to look at and admire from a distance, but likely to have you for a meal if you get too close. But the flip side of that—and of “Playing with Fire” a few days ago—is that this wild, powerful and consuming God reportedly is interested in intimacy with us mere mortals. Bone Digger not only enjoys his pint-sized friend Milo, but at least at one point in his life needed Milo. What does God need from us (besides someone to rub up against the divine fur and provide a needed teeth cleaning)? I have no idea, but I won’t find out unless I muster some dachshund-like nerve and confidence on occasion and venture into the lion’s den.
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