Thousands of dachshund dogs descend upon beach for ‘sausage walk’

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Louise Thomas

Editor

Over one thousand sausage dogs were united for a beach walk with their owners at an annual event in Suffolk. The ‘Southwold Sausage Walk’ brought together people from across the world to share their love of dachshunds.

The event attracted owners of the breed from across the world, with some even flying to the English coast from Florida, United States.

Organiser Laura Baggott said: “It’s always weather dependent and luckily we had sunshine.

“It’s such a good atmosphere and because it’s built over the years we now have stalls, we have music, we have a big raffle,” she said, “I think just where it is in Southwold is such a lovely place, it’s dog friendly.”

The event was only expected to bring together 500 sausage dogs but instead doubled that number. The walk has been held annually since 2017, setting an unofficial world record in 2022 for the world’s largest gathering of dogs of any single breed when 2,238 dachshunds were brought together.

Ms Baggott said: “It’s overwhelming when you see everyone on the beach and when you get home and see all the social media posts you’ve been tagged in, that’s overwhelming.

“You don’t realise how big it is. I’m very proud of it, I do feel like it’s very successful and it gets more successful every year.”

The dog-lover adds that her ambitions are to win the world record officially and to have a statue of a sausage dog in Southwold.

Giving the event a run for its money last year was the annual bringing together of Golden Retrievers in Scotland, with hundreds of owners turning up.

But beating both for the largest dog walk with dogs of any breed is the record set by Anthony Carlisle in South Shields in 2011, when 22,742 canines of 182 breeds took part.

Here are some more of the best pictures from this year’s Southwold Sausage Walk: