Excited Puppy

[dawna]

Hey Everyone,

Our dog is 7 months old now and he still pees when he gets excited. At first he would do it only sometimes when he was younger, but now as he is getting older he seems to be doing it more. We have started to crate train them, or leave them on the balcony, and so when we get home he gets so excited he pees everywhere, sometimes several times.

Is there any way to control this? I know its not really his fault but is there anyway to train him not to do that?

Also they chewed the outside corner of their crate...It still functions perfectly, however the crate could be considered damaged I guess. Will this still be ok when we fly? If anyone knows that we would really appreciate your advice!

Thank you!

[Karen]

Hi Dawna,

I fostered a timid 1 year old dog who also peed when he got excited every time we came home and in the morning when I first greeted him. What I read to do was to completely ignore him and to not react to the peeing (this is difficult when it's your leg :P)

I got him straight off a farm so he was not house trained at all. We were leaving him in a sectioned-off part of our (huge, sunny) balcony when we were out, which had a hose for easy clean-up. He did his main business outside (I walked him at least 4x per day) but at greetings he would lose a bit of control...

Anyway, whenever I came home I would make sure he saw me all the while NOT looking at him, not talking to him, not touching him. I would only greet him after he had calmed down, then I would pick him up and carry him to the elevator and outside (we lived on the 6th floor), so he could do his real job.

Within a couple weeks his peeing at greetings was decreasing. I also got him neutered on the second day.

He was adopted by someone who had experience dealing with a dog with submissive urination issues, and the problem has been resolved.

Here's a little more about submissive urination on PetEducation.com (http://peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=2&cat=1551&articleid=169)

As for the crate, I guess it depends on how bad the damage is. Can you post a picture so we can see? We flew our dog in a crate which had a semi-broken door and it was OK. Since the airline tapes the door shut there was no chance of escape.

Hope that helps,
Karen

[dawna]

Hi Karen,

Thanks so much for the response. That really does help! We tried the ignore thing today and it worked quite well. We have tried it before and it didn't work, so I guess we will just have to make it more consistent. Anyways we appreciate your time!

And it sounds like our kennel should be fine. The kennel still works perfectly, its just a bit of outside damage. We may post a picture just to make sure though.

Thanks again

Dawna

[jonomo]

Yeah.. this is a very good techinique.. and it's good to use just to make sure it doesn't happen to your dog even if he doesn't have this issue for now... when I come home I don't even look into my dog's eyes until he calms down...