Crate and Dog Door
If you have to be gone all day and want your dog to understand from the beginning that he should go outside to use the bathroom, consider trying a crate and dog-door setup. What you need to do is install a dog door into a door or even a wall of your home that opens into your fenced back yard.
Once you have the dog door in place, you remove the front door of your dachshund's crate and secure the crate with the opening against the dog door every morning before you leave for work. Outside, on the other side of the dog door, you should set up a playpen to create a sort of dog run for your dachshund. (If your dachsie is a climber, you should consider putting a wire mesh roof on the outdoor run to keep him safely contained.) This setup will allow your dachshund to snuggle in his carrier to sleep and rest and go outside to play where he will also go to relieve himself.
As your puppy ages and becomes more reliable, or as your adult becomes accustomed to this setup, you can increase the indoor area to a room with a carrier in it. You can also eventually increase the outdoor area to your entire fenced back yard, if you'd like. Your ultimate goal is to have a dachshund who is able to go in and out at will to relieve himself.
The dog-door dog can track in a lot of mud on rainy days — if he chooses to go outside. Some dachshunds hate to get their feet wet and will do anything not to go outside if it's raining. It may be prudent to go back to the secured crate and outdoor run on days such as this to ensure that the dachshund goes outside to relieve himself and to limit the amount of muck he can track into your home.
