I’ve come to the Buda Wiener Dog Races because of Zeus. Not the Greek god—my dog. A tricolor Cavalier King Charles spaniel with the attitude of a runaway aristocrat and the survival instincts of a moth in traffic, Zeus has never in his life completed a walk around the block without incident, much less a race. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he managed to get himself disqualified from today’s proceedings for reasons I’ll get into later. But that doesn’t stop me. I leave him behind in Austin and make my pilgrimage to a festival devoted entirely to short-legged misfits with overdeveloped egos.

When the starting gates open it’s like each wiener dog in this preliminary heat of six racers is auditioning for a different dog food commercial. Not one dachshund stays in their grassy lane or plays by the script. They range from dazed, to confused, to determined. All are adorable.

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.

It’s standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the packed lazy river at Schlitterbahn and coming home with a sunburn and athlete’s foot—and a new potential mate.

It’s floating on my back with a friend under the drizzling waterfall of Hamilton Pool, both of us pretending, behind our sunglasses, to cruise at light speed among shooting stars. The galactic magic fades long before the bacterial conjunctivitis sets in.

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.

I call him a rescue because I rescued him from a breeder in Utah, my home state. I arrived at the breeder’s doorstep in May 2022 with a stack of cash and a larger-than-life name already picked out. The breeder shot me a funny look. “You know, his dad’s name is Zeus,” she said, pointing to his parentage documents.

Zeus junior, my Zeus, bounded right up to me, tail wagging. He was speckle-bellied and sweet-smelling, and almost right away he started chewing on my gray tennis shoe. He was just shy of 4 months old, the last of his litter to find a home. After a plane ride back to Texas in a soft crate at my feet, he found just that. He climbed onto the open dishwasher like a surfer onto his board to lick dirty plates after dinner and into my lap when I drove him to the park. When I’d roll out my yoga mat to stretch and lift weights, he’d trot over and lick my ears, and then my cheeks and eyes. He went berserk anytime a horse appeared on TV.

I’d never had a dog as an adult, and I didn’t realize Zeus would become my kindred spirit. When I moved from room to room, he’d move with me, like a shadow. When I read a book in bed, he’d spring on me like a vampire, then roll on his back, splay his limbs, and fill my nights with his profligate, drunken snoring.

Zeus made my life better. He forced me out of the air conditioning and into the world. Together, we discovered a city full of natural wonders. We walked empty creekbeds and spotted migrating green parakeets in a nearby pocket park across from a bunch of food trailers. We hunted squirrels, always unsuccessfully, and appreciated the fleeting weeks in spring when the empty lot near our place, populated with the pretty pinkish stems of poison ivy, erupted in a carpet of bluebonnets.

Unfortunately, Zeus has proven an imperfect fit for urban life. Inbred as royalty, he runs toward speeding cars on South First Street, not away from them. As an 8-month-old puppy, Zeus ate a fluffy green nugget off the sidewalk and was so out of it he couldn’t stand until 5 p.m. the next day. I thought he’d had a stroke. A little more than a year later, Zeus and I were walking in the neighborhood dog run when I caught him eating from a punctured packet of blue powder. I picked it up and inspected it. ACTIVE INGREDIENT: BROMADIOLONE, it read. A quick Google search on my phone revealed the layman’s term for bromadiolone is rat poison.

Not to worry, Zeus hardly minded having the emergency vet induce vomiting. He also began to yearn for his new nightly treat: the vitamin K antidote he was prescribed for a month.

In the past, Zeus has escaped from an Airbnb in Canyon Lake and, most recently, from a rented house in front of the Texas School for the Deaf, about a hundred yards from busy South Congress Avenue. The dog is so unruly off-leash that I once griped to my friend, who is visually impaired and uses a seeing-eye dog, that I didn’t believe dogs could be trained. “I know you don’t believe that,” he said.

When I hear About the wiener dog races in Buda, I figure I’ll take Zeus. Come cheer on the Goliaths with the shortest legs and biggest hearts in the game, the radio ad said. This year’s theme, “Dogzilla Plus One,” felt spot-on. If ever there were a 20-pound Dogzilla, it’s my Cav. I want to show my little princeling misfit there’s a place for him here, among the wieners.

The plan is foiled when Zeus tries to eat a possum carcass at Big Stacy Park and follows it up, the morning we’re leaving for Buda, by frolicking in a field of sandburs. He emerges looking like the May Queen, beflowered in sticky brown burrs, biting his lip the way he does. I haul him home, give him a bath, and politely tell him he’s grounded. No wiener dogs for you, buddy.

He’s snoring on the couch before I’ve even closed the door behind me.

It’s a little after 9 a.m. when I park behind Cabela’s with the help of an attendant in a neon vest who can’t be more than 12 and catch a Hays County school bus to Buda City Park. Inside the bus, there’s a wiener dog in just about every row: howling, licking, locking eyes. I try not to look at my phone because my wallpaper is, of course, a close-up of Zeus. In the photo, he is almost pre-Raphaelite in his idyll, a Cindy Crawford beauty mark penciled on his pink snout.

Outside the bus window, in front of a barn with a rusted roof, I spot a traffic sign that reads Wiener Dog Races Expect Delays. I’m seated in front of a long-haired miniature dachshund. Gus is 8 months old and wears a corduroy hat with a G on it. He’s in the fifth heat of today’s races—prelims for tomorrow’s finals—and is one of 184 purebred and about 50 mixed-breed dachshunds in competition. I wish him and the couple cooing over him luck as we get off the bus.

“I’ll look out for you,” I say.

Hosted annually by the Buda Lions Club, the wiener dog races date to the late 1990s, when a local teacher, Diane Krejci, brought the idea home after attending a similar event in Savannah, Georgia. The Texas version has had the insouciant air of a delightful prank since its inception: a wholesome gathering at a municipal park with middle-school girls in face paint belting out country songs, trying to impress the 4-H kids and Boy Scouts selling burgers and deep-fried potato spirals on a stick. You almost forget the word wiener is everywhere, deployed mischievously and unironically in equal measure. I contemplate buying a shirt that says “Hard Fought Hallelujah”—an apt souvenir from this pure Texas Attraction.

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.

Turns out dachshunds are not among the state’s most popular breeds. That distinction goes to the French bulldog, the golden retriever, the Labrador, the bulldog, and the poodle, according to the American Kennel Club’s lists of popular breeds in Dallas and Houston. Some veterinarians caution against owning dachshunds because of the breed’s back problems. Abnormal cartilage can lead to a common defect, chondrodystrophy, that makes spinal discs more likely to herniate.

Standard dachshunds weigh between 16 and 32 pounds, the AKC says; miniature dachshunds tip the scales at under 11 pounds. Wiener dog lovers say the sporty, stubborn, affectionate breed is worth the trouble and potential heartache—not unlike the Cavalier King Charles, another breed that tops lists of dogs to avoid. Cavs are prone to a fatal heart condition, mitral valve disease, and can suffer from hip and knee problems. Like wiener dogs, Cavs are lap dogs with an off-road mode. They can go from dead asleep to knocking up the blinds to bark at a coyote in the condo parking lot faster than you can blink. You gotta love them.

the merch tents at the races are the first thing you come upon when entering the park. They’re unavoidable. Vendors sell everything wiener, from plant holders to naughty T-shirts (“I See You Looking at My Wiener,” “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places”). “You don’t have to clean up after them and you don’t have to feed them,” is one guy’s pitch about the wooden wiener dog figurines he sells. It goes without saying you don’t have to pick burrs out of their fur, either.

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.

On my final loop of the grounds, I find a wiener dog in a stroller decked out to look like a tropical parade float. “Retired Dog Racer” is affixed in poster board to the front. The float features plastic hula skirts and leis, plus a paper cutout of a palm tree, orchids, and flamingos. Its occupant, a dachshund from Wimberley named Ruben, raced for years before COVID, his mom tells me. Now, he’s 11 and has no teeth. He’s gray around the eyes and his tongue lolls out the side of his mouth. I imagine his breath is atomic.

The scale of the float makes him look bigger than he is, a little Dogzilla-like, as his mom gently wrestles him into a Hawaiian shirt for my benefit. Her nails are bird-of-paradise orange, the sunglasses in her hair turquoise. “We’re a little old to race, but we didn’t want to miss out on the fun.” Ruben beams when she pets his head. The bond between them is so real, so bone deep, it’s all I can do to make my way back to the school bus and head home to my very own little Texas Attraction. Knowing Zeus, he’s probably already got mitral valve disease, but he’ll always have a big heart. 

Greg Marshall’s Open Road essay “Saint Rex” appeared in the October 2023 issue.