For the glory and the squeaky toy at the Dachshund Derby finish line

Bean doesn’t have much heart for training. The wiener dog has been racing in the annual Dachshund Derby in Milwaukee since he was a year old. And although he loves to nudge a soccer ball around the house and go for walks, he struggles to follow a formal training regimen, said his owner Joe Stiehm.

“Dachshunds are definitely known for being stubborn when they don’t want to do things, and the official training is something that I would say he probably doesn’t always want to do, unless there is the food or toy involved with that,” Stiehm told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

But no matter what shape he’s in, Bean will be at the starting line for the Dachshund Derby on Sunday, July 28, as part of Milwaukee’s German Fest on the Summerfest grounds. He won’t be alone. A hundred dachshunds — a German breed, which makes them a natural for the German Fest — are expected to compete in the event, which has become a crowd-pleaser. 

Stiehm and Gail Pipke, one of the derby organizers, spoke to “Wisconsin Today” about the joy of watching wiener dogs racing or dressing up in costumes. 

Bean has never won the race, but he has twice won the costume contest — once dressed as the Milwaukee Brewers’ bratwurst mascot and once as a German soccer player. 

Pipke said the joy of watching the dogs race is captivating. “They’re not bred to race. So I think that’s the fun part,” she said. “You get these dogs that either they just stand there, they turn around, or they look like little lightning machines, just like they’ve been shot out of a cannon, and they just go because they want their squeaky toy back.”

Even the food scrap-sniffing stragglers are entertaining, Pipke added.

Bean usually does well in the first heat, but tends to lose steam in the second. “And usually, by that second time, when it’s all the winners racing against one another, he’s a little over it,” Stiehm said. “He knows he can let up a little bit and he’ll still get his treat and get his toy. But I think he does like the the attention of everybody, so I don’t fault him for that.”

For a taste of what the race is like, see the video Stiehm created of the 2012 race.