National Hot Dog Day – Wieners of BSM

Dachshunds, also affectionally known as wiener dogs, hold a special place at BSM.

It’s the most represented dog breed amongst our team members, thanks to a heavy participation from one of our founders, Nate Thomas, who shares his life with no less than 5 sausage dogs.

We did miss the opportunity to share our love of Dachshunds on National Dachshund Day, which happens on June 21^st, the longest day of the year. So we decided to redeem ourselves by using National Hot Dog Day as another opportunity to share about our team, and our love and passion for our four legged friends.

Fun facts

Fun Fact #1: A Dachshund was chosen as the first-ever Olympic games mascot!

It was for the 1972 Olympic Summer Games held in Germany. Its name was Waldi and it had a real-life alter ego, a female Dachshund called Cherie von Birkenhof.¹

Picture 1. Waldi                                                               Picture 2. Cherie von Birkenhof

Fun Fact #2: 100% of BSM wieners are ladies!

Our BSM family is continuously growing, and as of today, we are 34 strong. We counted 10 Doxies, and they are surprisingly all females! Fortunately, it looks like we do a better job at maintaining a balanced gender ratio with our human team members.

Graph 1. BSM Employee’s sex ratio.          Graph 2. BSM Dachshund’s sex ratio.

Meet our team and their best friends

Audra and Daisy.

Daisy in Audra’s words: “Daisy is a diva. She won’t eat anything; it has to be top notch. She doesn’t like food and literally will starve until I feed her what she wants. Everywhere we go, she gets comments on how pretty she is.”

Jen and Marlee.

Marlee in Jen’s words: “Marlee’s favorite foods are chicken nuggets and peanut butter. She is a total snob and will refuse any less-than-human-grade treats. She is quite sassy and knows she rules our house.”

David’s daughter and Mina.

Mina’s favorite food is popcorn.

Stephanie with Anny (Dachshund mix) and Gracie Lou (Beagle)

Anny in Stephanie’s words: “Anny is roughly 11 years old; she will be turning 12 in a few months on her “gotcha” anniversary. She was estimated to be around 2-year-old when we adopted her. Anny loves broccoli! She will actually get very excited if she smells it!”

Emilie and Boston.

Boston in Emilie’s words: “Bosti loves human food, but she is prone to weight gain so now her official favorite human treats are raw carrot pieces. She used to live outside but is now very much an indoor lap dog. She spends all day on my lap and all night in my arms under the blankets.”

Nate and Wienie, Billy, Fuzzy, Coyote & Wiggles.

Keeping up with the Thomas’s wiener gang has proven quite difficult since they all have one or two nicknames that seem unrelated to their original denomination. Wienie (or Wienskie) was originally named Lucy. Coyote was called Penelope. The only constant is that they all love ice cream, and their favorite human is Nate.

Are hot dogs good for wieners?

First, here is a summary of some key nutritional attributes of an average hot dog sausage. According to the USDA and the NHDSC websites, a hot dog sausage contains 169 kcal on average, with about 498mg of sodium, and 15.3g of fat.^2,3

Table 1. Calories, sodium, and fat content of an average hot dog sausage.

Then, let’s look at the caloric, fat, and sodium needs of our canine friends, based on their MER (Maintenance Energy Requirements), which are calculated using the equation below:

Dog MER = 110 X (Body Weight in kg)0.75 power

Table 2. Calorie requirements of 10, 50 and 90 lbs. dogs based on their MER⁴.

As illustrated in Table 2, a 10 lbs. dog needs about 311 kcal per day to maintain its weight.

Now that we have the foundations, we can compare the contributions of a single hot dog sausage to the overall nutritional requirements of a dog with moderate activity level. Three dog sizes were chosen to illustrate that the contributions are dependent of the dog’s overall size and weight.

Table 3. Calories, sodium, and fat contribution of a hot dog sausage in the daily nutritional requirement of a 10, 50 or 90 lbs. dog.

As illustrated in Table 3, if someone gives a small 10 lbs. Dachshund just one hot dog sausage, this single human food treat would contribute to 801% of the recommended sodium minimum, and to 357% of the recommended fat minimum. It would also constitute 54% of the dog’s recommended calories for the whole day.

Circling back on our original question: we won’t tell you what to do or not to do, we will let you decide for yourself!

References:

1. International Olympic Committee. Retrieved from https://olympics.com/en/olympic-games/munich-1972/mascot.
2. S. Department of Agriculture. Retrieved from https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/323121/nutrients.
3. National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. Retrieved from https://hot-dog.org/resources/Hot-Dog-and-Sausage-Nutrition-Guide.
4. Waltham pocket book of healthy weight maintenance for cats and dogs (2^nd edition), page 16. Retrieved fromhttps://www.waltham.com/sites/g/files/jydpyr1046/files/2020-05/walthampocketbookofhealthyweightmaintenanceforcatsanddogs.pdf

About the author: Emilie Mesnier has a Master’s in Food Science from France and started working in the petfood industry in 2007. She is passionate about animal wellness and animal welfare and obsessed about Dachshunds. She and her husband started a rescue farm in 2019 and live happily in Utah with their goats, chickens, cats, and their rescue dog, Boston.

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