I was wondering if I could pick all of your expert brains.... :-)

My mini dachshund had her last season at the end of September, which lasted 3 weeks and was nothing out of the ordinary, except in the fact that this time the build up seemed a lot longer and more intense.....by this I mean she seemed to be licking herself (sometimes quite intently) for about 6 to 8 weeks beforehand, whereas before this has been a lot less. She was 3 years old in September and this was her 4th season.  She has never been mated, so never had puppies.

Since her last season finished she has been having these episodes where she will lick her lady bits intently for a period of a few minutes or so, and will get so involved in it that she will end up giving herself a little thrill (well I assume this is what it is, as her little back legs go into a spasm for about 5 or 10 seconds). These episodes can occur two or three times a day, or sometimes she will go for a day or so without anything happening.

She also suffers with her anal glands in the fact that she has to have them emptied manually every 6 weeks or so, and when they need to be done she has similar episodes where she will lick her bum intently and work herself up into a real frenzy where she will lay on the floor on her back kicking her legs and growling at her bum.

I was wondering whether this could be linked.....or whether it could be a habit she has got into where if one thing isn't bothering her, she will focus on something else or whether any of you thought there could be more to it with the excessive licking of her lady bits?

She's perfectly healthy otherwise, she's a little underweight but not massively so (you can feel her ribs and backbone easily but she looks fine and I'm in the process of trying to get some weight on her at the moment), she LOVES her food and will eat for England if you let her so I'm trying to do it gradually, so nothing wrong with her appetite. She does drink quite a lot but I don't think it's really excessively.....she was on dry food only, whereas for the past week I have been introducing wet food into her diet and her drinking has gone down, so I am assuming the amount of water she was drinking was due to her dry food diet. She loves her walks, she does sleep a lot at home but she has always been like this since she had her first season so it's not abnormal for her.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this :-)

Can I assume that I am perhaps overreacting to this by the fact that no one has any comments? :-)

I would think that a trip to the vet is in order:  Dachsies often have spinal/back problems, and anything involving spasms of the rear legs could well be related to a spinal issue.  (Perhaps caused by her twisting to lick herself.)  Are you sure she enjoys this spasming of her legs, and isn't in pain during it?

With her anal glands, I'd feed her something like Nature Diet, which is high in ground bone content and so creates very firm stools which tend to express the anal glands naturally when the dog toilets.

Thanks Rabid, she did actually used to have Naturediet some time back but we switched on advice from the vet but I think we will give it a go again and see if it helps.

Regarding her legs, I am sort of assuming really seeing as its after some intensive licking, but I will take her to the vets to make sure all is ok. I think I'll record it on my phone next time she has an episode so they can see more clearly what it's like rather than me trying to describe it.