The stout, short-haired fellow in the pink collar comes out as crookedly as a baby tooth and drops off the back of the pack. He’s the puppy of the bunch. Ahead of him, a golden-haired lowrider hustles so hard his ears fly behind him. The ears of the wiener dog in the yellow collar next to him swing straight up like devil horns with each stride. He’s got the determined grimace of a champion, but he’s making about as much forward progress as a rocking horse.
Several sausage links ahead of the nearest competitor, a long-haired specimen in a blue collar bounds on the diagonal toward her owner at the finish line, tail erect as a sail, flaunting her rich white coat and chestnut markings to the admirers in the bleachers.
“This one has that mama-has-a-treat-at-home energy,” a spectator beside me says. She thumbs one of her wiener dog earrings. “She doesn’t realize she’s in Buda. She thinks she’s at Westminster.”
The Buda Wiener Dog Races, now in their 28th year, are like comic-con for the tubular canines with stubby legs and Napoleonic personalities. For one April weekend, a mass of people gathers for a pet parade, a costume contest, live music, a barbecue cookoff, and the sprint to be crowned the fastest wiener dog.
The race I’ve just witnessed is hardly a classic photo finish. Then again, it’s always a Hollywood ending here in Buda. Regardless of what place a dog comes in, their owners greet them with toys and treats. They sweep their wieners up in their arms for kisses and document every aw shucks moment with their phones. You’d think these brave dachshunds traveled not 70 feet of browning park grass but hundreds of miles, over hill and dale, to be reunited with their owners.
It makes me miss Zeus, even though he’s just at home.
I’ve never gotten used to how little it takes for Texans to have a good time. I’m not talking starry skies and endless horizons, cattle drives and campfires, but something closer to home. I mean the perpetual summer camp feeling of living in Central Texas—the gritty, grimy, sweaty fun that comes when, say, a bunch of people in a small town 20 miles south of the capital city decide to turn a public park into a wiener dog racetrack. They grill some burgers and spray white paint to mark the finish line, and 12,000 people show up.
I’ve coined a term for this cultural phenomenon: a Texas Attraction.
A Texas Attraction is chaotic, crowded, hot, and uniquely regional, largely without the corporate gloss of Disney or its commercial ilk. (...)
A Texas Attraction is going to Austin City Limits Music Festival last October in 100-degree heat, putting my shirt over my nose and mouth to keep out the dust, and rushing the stage through tiny tornadoes of kicked-up dirt and dead grass when 91-year-old Willie Nelson made a surprise appearance to sing a cowboy duet with country crooner Orville Peck.
A Texas Attraction is emerging from McKinney Falls covered in moss, like a swamp monster. It’s the spit shields above the roller-coaster lines at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. It’s eating it on the rocks of Hippie Hollow. The hot tub in my condo complex in Bouldin Creek, south of downtown, briefly became a Texas Attraction when, in the swelter of last summer, the cover broke and the water temperature soared to 130 degrees.
For as much as I can appreciate a Texas Attraction, I never let my dog Zeus tag along. The few times I’ve tried to include him in an outing, we’ve ended up at the pet ER. When Zeus goes anywhere, he is the Texas Attraction.
Zeus is a dog of regal good looks and impeccable breeding who came my way because of a deformity that knocked him out of dog show contention: an underbite. Sometimes it looks like he’s rakishly chewing his lip. That’s the extent of it. (...)
A cheer erupts from the stands in the distance. The first races have started. I make my way past a high school mariachi band and head to the racetrack.
The apparel that people and their pets wear rivals a Renaissance fair. A guy with a classic brown wiener dog in his arms sports a hat of comparable size, shape, and color. He’s like a Cheesehead but for wiener dogs. It’s Etsy gone wild: socks, belts, bracelets. One shirt features a Sasquatch walking a wiener dog. “Y’all are slipping,” the announcer tells a pair of owners at the finish line. “Y’all don’t have hats and shirts. I expect wiener shirts on both of you tomorrow.”
Folks in the stands let out an approving roar. Indications of this being a Texas Attraction are not hard to find. A beefy biker dude in the bleachers mops at the sweat on his head with a white bandanna. At his feet: a dachshund in a sunflower-patterned harness. A tattooed guy who looks like he could take down Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House is wearing a soft cotton T-shirt that announces to the world he’s a “Dachshund Dad.” Some of the wiener dogs racing today are named Brisket, Pickles, and, cleverest of all, Boudin, like the Cajun sausage. “I don’t know why y’all come up with some of these names,” the announcer says. “I don’t know why you can’t just call them D-O-G.”
I can’t imagine Zeus with any other name. Nothing else could capture those eyes of thunder or the part of his bangs, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s in Titanic. And forget about the spotted roof of his mouth when he yawns. He may not be the god of gods but he’s the dog of dogs. What’s in a dog’s name? His dad’s name. Destiny.
Near the gate where racers exit the track, I meet a red piebald miniature dachshund named Poppy. Her mom, Audrey Garcia, is wearing a teal Dog Mama hat covered in wiener dog pins, a silver wiener dog necklace, gold wiener dog earrings, and a shirt that says “Fueled by Jesus & Wiener Dogs.”
Poppy raced for the first time last year, when she was just 6 months old, and got second in her heat. After a year of training, she came in second again this year. “She likes to go after the No. 1 dog,” Garcia says, chuckling. “I’m like, can you focus on mommy standing at the finish line?” Garcia is originally from San Marcos but recently moved to Blanco, about an hour west of Buda. She came to the races today to meet up with her best friend, also a wiener dog owner. “We plan on making it a little tradition,” Garcia says.
It’s probably too much to say that in quirky Texan traditions like the Buda Wiener Dog Races, we find a reflection of our state’s character—unvarnished, affectionate, a little raunchy. And in our relationships with flawed but beloved dogs, we see our own imperfections embraced and celebrated. But why not? “Fueled by Zeus & Wiener Dogs.”
Walking around a tent with posters from previous wiener dog races, seeing the humble dachshund photoshopped onto Tom Cruise’s body in Top Gun or beautifully rendered as young Simba against the savanna sunset in “The Wiener King,” it occurs to me that some textbook projection is at play. In Texas, a state where everything from the trucks we drive to the cups we drink from has to be bigger, there’s something comforting about going small. In this one realm, on this one weekend, our heroes don’t need to be giants. They can be fallible, charming—a little more like the humans who love them. Wiener dogs, you are us.
Several sausage links ahead of the nearest competitor, a long-haired specimen in a blue collar bounds on the diagonal toward her owner at the finish line, tail erect as a sail, flaunting her rich white coat and chestnut markings to the admirers in the bleachers.
“This one has that mama-has-a-treat-at-home energy,” a spectator beside me says. She thumbs one of her wiener dog earrings. “She doesn’t realize she’s in Buda. She thinks she’s at Westminster.”
The Buda Wiener Dog Races, now in their 28th year, are like comic-con for the tubular canines with stubby legs and Napoleonic personalities. For one April weekend, a mass of people gathers for a pet parade, a costume contest, live music, a barbecue cookoff, and the sprint to be crowned the fastest wiener dog.
The race I’ve just witnessed is hardly a classic photo finish. Then again, it’s always a Hollywood ending here in Buda. Regardless of what place a dog comes in, their owners greet them with toys and treats. They sweep their wieners up in their arms for kisses and document every aw shucks moment with their phones. You’d think these brave dachshunds traveled not 70 feet of browning park grass but hundreds of miles, over hill and dale, to be reunited with their owners.
It makes me miss Zeus, even though he’s just at home.
I’ve never gotten used to how little it takes for Texans to have a good time. I’m not talking starry skies and endless horizons, cattle drives and campfires, but something closer to home. I mean the perpetual summer camp feeling of living in Central Texas—the gritty, grimy, sweaty fun that comes when, say, a bunch of people in a small town 20 miles south of the capital city decide to turn a public park into a wiener dog racetrack. They grill some burgers and spray white paint to mark the finish line, and 12,000 people show up.
I’ve coined a term for this cultural phenomenon: a Texas Attraction.
A Texas Attraction is chaotic, crowded, hot, and uniquely regional, largely without the corporate gloss of Disney or its commercial ilk. (...)
A Texas Attraction is going to Austin City Limits Music Festival last October in 100-degree heat, putting my shirt over my nose and mouth to keep out the dust, and rushing the stage through tiny tornadoes of kicked-up dirt and dead grass when 91-year-old Willie Nelson made a surprise appearance to sing a cowboy duet with country crooner Orville Peck.
A Texas Attraction is emerging from McKinney Falls covered in moss, like a swamp monster. It’s the spit shields above the roller-coaster lines at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. It’s eating it on the rocks of Hippie Hollow. The hot tub in my condo complex in Bouldin Creek, south of downtown, briefly became a Texas Attraction when, in the swelter of last summer, the cover broke and the water temperature soared to 130 degrees.
For as much as I can appreciate a Texas Attraction, I never let my dog Zeus tag along. The few times I’ve tried to include him in an outing, we’ve ended up at the pet ER. When Zeus goes anywhere, he is the Texas Attraction.
Zeus is a dog of regal good looks and impeccable breeding who came my way because of a deformity that knocked him out of dog show contention: an underbite. Sometimes it looks like he’s rakishly chewing his lip. That’s the extent of it. (...)
About three-dozen dachshunds raced in Buda’s inaugural competition in 1997 under the theme “The Amazing Wiener Dog.” The race’s popularity, and the playfulness of its theme, grew from there. It’s fair to say galloping wiener dogs are now a big deal in this part of the world. There’s a reason Buda calls itself the Wiener Dog Capital of Texas. (...)
A cheer erupts from the stands in the distance. The first races have started. I make my way past a high school mariachi band and head to the racetrack.
The apparel that people and their pets wear rivals a Renaissance fair. A guy with a classic brown wiener dog in his arms sports a hat of comparable size, shape, and color. He’s like a Cheesehead but for wiener dogs. It’s Etsy gone wild: socks, belts, bracelets. One shirt features a Sasquatch walking a wiener dog. “Y’all are slipping,” the announcer tells a pair of owners at the finish line. “Y’all don’t have hats and shirts. I expect wiener shirts on both of you tomorrow.”
Folks in the stands let out an approving roar. Indications of this being a Texas Attraction are not hard to find. A beefy biker dude in the bleachers mops at the sweat on his head with a white bandanna. At his feet: a dachshund in a sunflower-patterned harness. A tattooed guy who looks like he could take down Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House is wearing a soft cotton T-shirt that announces to the world he’s a “Dachshund Dad.” Some of the wiener dogs racing today are named Brisket, Pickles, and, cleverest of all, Boudin, like the Cajun sausage. “I don’t know why y’all come up with some of these names,” the announcer says. “I don’t know why you can’t just call them D-O-G.”
I can’t imagine Zeus with any other name. Nothing else could capture those eyes of thunder or the part of his bangs, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s in Titanic. And forget about the spotted roof of his mouth when he yawns. He may not be the god of gods but he’s the dog of dogs. What’s in a dog’s name? His dad’s name. Destiny.
Near the gate where racers exit the track, I meet a red piebald miniature dachshund named Poppy. Her mom, Audrey Garcia, is wearing a teal Dog Mama hat covered in wiener dog pins, a silver wiener dog necklace, gold wiener dog earrings, and a shirt that says “Fueled by Jesus & Wiener Dogs.”
Poppy raced for the first time last year, when she was just 6 months old, and got second in her heat. After a year of training, she came in second again this year. “She likes to go after the No. 1 dog,” Garcia says, chuckling. “I’m like, can you focus on mommy standing at the finish line?” Garcia is originally from San Marcos but recently moved to Blanco, about an hour west of Buda. She came to the races today to meet up with her best friend, also a wiener dog owner. “We plan on making it a little tradition,” Garcia says.
It’s probably too much to say that in quirky Texan traditions like the Buda Wiener Dog Races, we find a reflection of our state’s character—unvarnished, affectionate, a little raunchy. And in our relationships with flawed but beloved dogs, we see our own imperfections embraced and celebrated. But why not? “Fueled by Zeus & Wiener Dogs.”
Walking around a tent with posters from previous wiener dog races, seeing the humble dachshund photoshopped onto Tom Cruise’s body in Top Gun or beautifully rendered as young Simba against the savanna sunset in “The Wiener King,” it occurs to me that some textbook projection is at play. In Texas, a state where everything from the trucks we drive to the cups we drink from has to be bigger, there’s something comforting about going small. In this one realm, on this one weekend, our heroes don’t need to be giants. They can be fallible, charming—a little more like the humans who love them. Wiener dogs, you are us.
by Gregg Marshall, Texas Highways | Read more:
Image: markk
[ed. We have a Weiner Dog Festival here, too. I don't know who started first and don't have the energy or interest to look it up (a true wiener dog attitude if there ever was one). Suffice to say, they both sound pretty similar. I grew up with dachshunds, my first being "Jingle" a Christmas surprise (of course). My mom tried to breed her once, but the vet wasn't much into due diligence and instead of a line of first class AKC puppies, we got eight (nine, but one died at childbirth) little wiggling sausages of mysterious pedigree who'd go tearing everywhere around the house, chasing and tumbling after each other, and yelping out little mini-barks. Good times. In the end, despite lacking purebred qualities, they all went to good homes. Except for Sam, the last of the bunch. Like the author's dog with the underbite, Sam had an overbite, which meant that half the time he looked like he was sticking his tongue out at you. But he was such a sweet little guy, curious and easy going (always acting brave behind his mom whenever trouble appeared), kind of how I imagine Ringo to be (dogwise). Since then I've had other wieners who were just as sweet and devoted. A good breed for sure, one of the best. But, back to the festival. Glad to hear it! We can't have too many. Here are some pics I took from our town's a few years back: Wiener-palooza!]
