Weimaraner
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48 free Weimaraner trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Weimaraner is the silver-grey gun dog that takes its name from the city of Weimar, where Goethe's patron Grand Duke Karl August is said to have kept them at court. Registered for a while as a blue variant of the German Shorthaired Pointer, shown for the first time in Berlin in 1880, recognised as a breed in 1891 and nearly lost during the First World War, it remains, in Germany at least, a hunter's dog that the breed club says does not belong on a sofa. These 48 questions cover the breed's origins in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Thuringia, the van Dyck and Oudry paintings, the three types shown in 1880, the Erfurt club of 1897, FCI acceptance in 1954 and the modern German registration numbers. They also cover the standard: the heights and weights, the mouse-grey, roe-grey and silver-grey coat, the short and long coat varieties, the amber eyes and rounded ears, plus the neurological and eye diseases the breed is prone to, its 12.8-year lifespan and its second-highest risk of gastric torsion. A further set covers William Wegman's Weimaraners Man Ray and Fay Ray, their Sesame Street segments and Polaroid portraits, the Vizsla cousin it is often mistaken for, and the city and duke behind the name. The easy tier asks what colour the breed is; the expert tier wants the three kennel types of 1880 and the name of the Erfurt breed association. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation. Play it solo or print it for a gundog-club night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which housemates do vets advise against keeping with a Weimaraner?
Cats and small pets
Cats and small pets. Bred to chase game, the Weimaraner has a strong prey drive and is likely to treat a cat or other small animal as quarry, though a well-socialised one gets on with other dogs.
Q 02Which behaviour problem, common in the breed, does the Weimaraner Club of America link to many rescue cases?
Separation anxiety
Separation anxiety. Weimaraners bond so tightly that they trail their people from room to room, and one left alone for long may bark, chew or dig its way through the house.
Q 03In which modern German state does Weimar, the city that gave the Weimaraner its name, lie?
Thuringia
Thuringia. The breed standard says the dogs were already kept at the Weimar court in the early 1800s, which is how a dog bred by the region's gamekeepers came to carry the city's name.
Q 04Which US president kept a Weimaraner named Heidi at the White House in the 1950s?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower. Heidi, a gift from his postmaster general, roamed the grounds at will chasing squirrels, then retired to the family's Gettysburg farm, where she had puppies.
Q 05Germany's Weimaraner club places its puppies mainly with which kind of owner?
Hunters
Hunters. The club insists the breed is 'not a companion dog, but a hunting dog through and through' and needs real work in the field to stay even-tempered.
Q 06Which Flemish painter of royal portraits included a silver-grey, Weimaraner-like dog in a picture of the 1600s?
Antoon van Dyck
Antoon van Dyck. His dog long predates the breed's accepted beginnings at the Weimar court in the early 1800s, one reason the Weimaraner's true origins are still argued over.
Q 07In which American Kennel Club group does the Weimaraner compete?
Sporting
Sporting. Its forebears were leash hounds that worked by scent, but 19th-century breeders remade the breed into a pointing bird dog, so it is shown among the gundogs and not the hounds.
Q 08German registries once tried to file the grey Weimaraner as a mere variety of which other gundog?
German Shorthaired Pointer
German Shorthaired Pointer. Even after the Weimaraner got its own standard in 1896, officials tried to fold it into the Shorthair stud book, and East Germany later did exactly that.
Q 09Before it became a bird dog, the Weimaraner was bred at German courts to pursue which quarry?
Bear and deer
Bear and deer. As big game dwindled and shotguns spread in the 19th century, breeders steered the dogs toward pointing and fetching birds, the work they still do.
Q 10Weimaraner puppies are born with which markings, which fade away within days?
Faint stripes
Faint stripes. The tiger-like bars fade within days; the only stripe an adult may show is a darker line down the spine, which Britain's breed standard calls an eel stripe.
Q 11Germany's Weimaraner club guarded the breed so closely that the first pair it sent to America had been what?
Sterilised
Sterilised. Howard Knight, the American who received them, had to wait until 1938 for fertile dogs, and four years later his circle founded the Weimaraner Club of America.
Q 12The American breed standard says a Weimaraner's firm, compact feet should also be what?
Webbed
Webbed. The skin between the toes helps make the breed a strong swimmer, which matters in a gundog expected to work in water as well as on land.
Q 13The American Kennel Club recognised the German-bred Weimaraner in the middle of which war?
World War II
Q 21Which feeding aid did a large US study link to a higher risk of bloat in big breeds like the Weimaraner?
Raised food bowls
Raised food bowls. The Purdue study, which followed Weimaraners among eleven breeds, blamed a raised bowl for about a fifth of bloat cases in large dogs and half of those in giant ones.
Q 22Which sign of bloat, the stomach emergency Weimaraners are prone to, means a dash to the vet?
Retching that brings nothing up
Retching that brings nothing up. Once a swollen stomach twists far enough the gullet is pinched shut, so the dog heaves and drools without relief and needs surgery at once.
Q 23Germany's Weimaraner club lets a dog breed only after which joints have been X-rayed and graded?
World War II. Recognition came in 1942–43 and the dogs made their Westminster debut in 1943, while America was fighting the very country that had guarded the breed so jealously.
Q 14In German, the W that begins 'Weimaraner' is pronounced like which English letter?
V
V. German spells that sound with a W, so the breed's home city is 'VY-mar', and English dictionaries still list 'VY-muh-rah-ner' ahead of the anglicised 'WY-' form.
Q 15Which distinction does Germany's breed standard claim for the Weimaraner among the country's pointing dogs?
The oldest
The oldest. The standard calls this likely, reasoning that the Weimaraner has been bred pure from about 1900 and kept almost free of crosses with other breeds.
Q 16What does a Weimaraner do when it goes 'on point' in the field?
Freezes, muzzle aimed at game
Freezes, muzzle aimed at game. Often with one front paw lifted, the dog holds still to show where the quarry hides, letting the gun walk into range before it flushes.
Q 17Which nickname is the Weimaraner widely known by?
The Grey Ghost
The Grey Ghost. The name is credited partly to the silver-grey coat and partly to the stealthy, almost catlike way the dog stalks game.
Q 18Weimaraner puppies' eyes change colour as they grow; which adult shade does the German standard require?
Amber
Amber. Germany's standard asks for pale to dark amber, while the American one also accepts grey shades, and every puppy's eyes start out quite another colour.
Q 19Which Weimaraner variety is bred in Germany but disqualified from American show rings?
Long-haired
Long-haired. The soft, feathered coat is recessive, so two short-haired parents can produce it; Germany has registered the variety since the 1930s, but America's standard still bars it.
Q 20How does the breed standard describe a Weimaraner's ears?
Pendent with rounded tips
Pendent with rounded tips. Set high and reaching about the corner of the mouth, they swing forward when the dog is alert, and like all drop ears need regular checks for infection.
Hips
Hips. A sound hip score is only the start: the club also demands a passed working test, a temperament test and a yearly eye check before any mating.
Q 24Which American artist is famous for photographing his Weimaraners in costumes?
William Wegman
William Wegman. When his first canine model died in 1982 he went four years without a dog, then started again with a puppy whose litters became a whole cast of characters.
Q 25The first Weimaraner to star in a famous photographer's dog portraits shared his name with which Surrealist artist?
Man Ray
Man Ray. The puppy kept barging into the videos his owner was shooting in early-1970s Los Angeles, so the artist gave in and made the deadpan dog his collaborator for twelve years.
Q 26Which New York weekly named a Weimaraner, famous from a decade of art photographs, its 'Man of the Year' in 1982?
The Village Voice
The Village Voice. The downtown paper's tribute marked the death of a dog whose big colour portraits had made him and his owner widely loved well beyond the galleries.
Q 27Which company built the giant 20-by-24-inch camera behind many of the best-known costumed Weimaraner portraits?
Polaroid
Polaroid. The firm built only a handful of the huge instant cameras in the 1970s and invited artists in to use them; the big colour Weimaraner portraits began with one such invitation.
Q 28In which children's TV show did Wegman's Weimaraners first appear in 1988?
Sesame Street
Fay Ray starred in segments such as Old McFay Counts to 40.
Q 29When a Weimaraner's coat grows back over an injury, which colour is the new hair often?
White
White. Because scars so often leave pale patches, the American and British standards both tell judges not to penalise white spots that result from an injury.
Q 30The American standard wants a Weimaraner's temperament to be friendly, alert, obedient and what else?
Fearless
Fearless. The breed's founders prized courage, and the same standard ranks strong fear, shyness or nervousness among its very serious faults.