Weimaraner

Background and characteristics

The Weimaraner was developed around the court of Weimar in nineteenth-century Germany, first for boar and deer and later, as large game thinned out, as a pointing and retrieving bird dog. Two things survive from that history: the nerve and stamina of a big-game hound, and the habit of working shoulder to shoulder with one person all day. The second matters far more to modern owners.

Temperament and living together

Weimaraners do not cope well with being alone. They follow you room to room, and when left they bark, howl, scratch doors, and pace. Separation anxiety in this breed is close to the default setting rather than an unlucky outcome, so structured alone-time training from puppyhood is essential.

If your household is empty eight hours a day, this is the wrong dog, and no amount of exercise fixes it.

Exercise and play

Exercise runs to roughly two hours a day including real running, plus twenty or thirty minutes of thinking work. These dogs open doors, clear counters while standing on their hind legs, and scale fences, and a bored one is inventive rather than merely naughty.

Coat and everyday care

Grooming is trivial: a rubber mitt once a week on the short single coat, no trimming. The flip side is that with almost no undercoat they feel cold quickly, so a coat for winter walks is not a luxury.

Health considerations

The health issue to take seriously is gastric dilatation-volvulus. The deep, narrow chest puts this breed high on the risk list, so feed split meals, keep the dog quiet for an hour after eating, and treat a distended abdomen with unproductive retching as an emergency. Also discuss hip dysplasia, hypertrophic osteodystrophy in growing puppies, and entropion with a breeder.

Home environment and care planning

The right home has land, an active routine, and people in it for most of the day. In a terraced house or apartment, the noise a distressed Weimaraner makes is usually what ends the arrangement.