Dog Training | Dog Training: Common House Training Problems

In terms of dog training, house training is one of the areas of dog ownership and one of the most common dog training problems that is most subject to misunderstanding, confusion, and just plain dread boy dog owners and even dog training experts.

In today’s dog training article we are going to examine and learn how to deal with two of the most common problems surrounding the issue of house training your dog:

- Submissive and excited urination

- Scent marking behavior

Common house training problem #1: Submissive and excited urination

What is it a ‘submissive urinator’?

A ‘submissive urinator’, in dog training terms, is a dog that urinates on the floor and himself (and sometimes on you or any guests you may have!) in situations of extreme excitement or stress, like when you return home at the end of the work day or when the dog is being told off for some bad behavior.

Why does this happen?

Puppies are the most usual candidates for submissive/excited urination, but it is also not uncommon to see this behavior in adult dogs as well. Usually, these are highly sensitive and timid dogs, and/or ones from a shelter/with a history of abuse (often these last two go hand-in-hand and one of most common things we see as dog training professionals.)

When does it happen?

Situations which are likely to trigger an excited/fearful dog to urinate:

- Greeting time after a prolonged absence of owner

- Play time where a dog gets too excited

- The arrival of guests (particularly unknown guests)

- Stressful situations at home, eg arguments involving owner

- During a behavior correction such as you’re telling him off

- Sudden and unexpected loud noises such as thunder or fireworks

What can I do about it?

Luckily as dog training experts will tell you, it is not difficult to prevent your dog from doing his submissive or excited urination.

Firstly and most importantly, you should take him to the vet to make sure there is no unknown medical reason for the issue (such as diabetes or a hidden bladder infection.)

Next, it’s time to take use good dog training techniques to control the problem:

- Try to limit his intake of water to help him control his bladder more effectively, this is very important. Don’t restrict his water intake over a prolonged period of time, but if you know there is a situation coming which would normally result in a loss of bladder control, for example, you have guests coming over, or are planning on a play session soon, take his water bowl away for a period of time (maybe half an hour to an hour) before the event.

- When greeting your dog, keep it calm and mellow. The more excited he is, the harder it is for him to control his bladder, so don’t encourage him to get worked up: ignore him for the first few moments, or give him a very neutral “hello”, a quick and gentle pat, and then go about making yourself at home.

- It’s important that you DO NOT punish or harshly correct your dog for this behavior. It is not something that he can easily control, and he’s certainly not doing it on purpose. Punishing a dog for this behavior can cause emotional distress and lead to more problems for you and the dog in the long run. When you catch him in the act, you can interrupt him (a firm “No!” followed by praise when he stops should suffice) but don’t punish him. Keep your cool, and try to be sympathetic: he doesn’t mean to do it, after all!

- If he urinates out of fear (submissiveness) when scolding him for another offense, try to take the stress levels down a notch by keeping a firm, authoritative, but not angry tone. Remember, you’re dealing with a sensitive, highly-strung dog: if you get angry or worry him further, the problem will worsen.

Common house training problem #2: Scent marking

In dog training terms ‘Scent marking’ is where a dog ‘marks’ his or her territory with urine. Technically this is not actually a house training problem, since it’s based on the dog training issues of dominance and territoriality rather than insufficient house training. A dog can be perfectly house trained but still feel the need to mark inside the house.

However, because – since the problem centers around the unwanted presence of urine in the house – it seems logical, in a way, to link this problem with house training. Since this is one of the most widespread problems among dog owners, we as dog training professionals thought it worthwhile to include some practical advice.

Scent marking and lack of house training: how to differentiate between the two

Your dog is most likely scent marking their territory, rather than genuinely relieving himself, if:

- The amount of urine produced is relatively small, and tends to be directed against vertical surfaces such as doors, walls or furniture.

- If your dog is an unneutered male and at least five or six months old. Unneutered dogs are much more territorial than neutered ones. If you have an unneutered dog in the house, you can pretty much expect a certain amount of scent marking as he defines his own areas. It should also be noted that unspayed females also mark, but it is much less common. Spayed and neutered dogs can also exhibit marking behavior, but it’s relatively rare but should not be discounted.

- It makes little difference how often he is taken outside for a toilet break

- He frequently targets items that are new to the house such as new possessions, guest clothing/footwear, etc that do not carry some form of his scent

- You live in a multi-dog household and there is conflict between two or more of the dogs. In this case it is a dominance issue between the two and they may both mark.

- There are other, unneutered or unspayed pets in the house

What to do about the problem?

From a dog training perspective the first thing you need to do is spay or neuter your dog(s) as soon as you possibly can. If you can do this early enough, ideally, at six months of age, this often halts marking altogether. If this is not possible or if your dog’s been marking for a prolonged period of time, he or she may continue to do so after being spayed or neutered, since a pattern of behavior will have been established.

Ensure you clean soiled areas thoroughly. Use a non-ammonia based cleaner, because it smells just like pee, and stay away from vinegar too, it smells similar to pee as well. Oxi-Clean mixed with warm water is particularly effective on these areas and there are also plenty of commercial cleaners designed specifically to lift pet stains and odors, which you can buy from pet stores and some supermarkets.

Because dogs tend to re-mark the same places, you’ll need to redefine the places that you know he’s marked to prevent repeat offending.

Many dog training experts will recommend the following ways to do this:

- Feed him next to or on top of the spot

- Play with him there

- Groom him there

- Put his bed over or next to it

- Spend time there yourself: hang out with a book or sit down and work

Finally, one particular aspect of dog training that is often overlooked is if there is rivalry between dogs in the household. In this case you will need to take steps to resolve it. Any conflict is likely to be hierarchical in nature (a ‘power struggle’), which means that all you have to do to stop the tension is pay attention to which dog seems to be more dominant than the other one (which one eats first, gets the toys he/she wants, ‘stares down’ another dog), and reinforce this position to establish the hierarchy.

So how do you do this? From a dog training perspective it is relatively simple. First, feed the dominant dog first. Pet him/her first. Give him/her a toy before anyone else gets one. This makes it clear to all dogs in the house which one really is the dominant dog. When this hierarchy’s been recognizably established, territorial and dominant behaviors like scent marking often vanish overnight.

Related Blogs

• Advangtages of Adopting an Adult Dog | San Diego Dog Training Blog
• Blue Buffalo Lamb and Brown Rice Adult Dog Food | Large Dog House
• Has anyone had their dogs trained at Petsmart? | Frontline Dogs
• Pet Talk – Separation Anxiety | SouthWest Horse Trader
• KICKIN' AND SCREAMIN'……….. » Blog Archive » ELLEN DEGENERES ENABLING BAD BEHAVIOR?

Dog Training | Dog Training Is Work Never Finished!

Just when I think I’ve got my dog Tuxcitto in control he gives me a demonstration that this well may be a life long pursuit. Tuxcitto is a Border Collie that has an uncanny learning capability. Not from my dog training skills but from observation. He watches everything that goes on around him.

And you never know when he’s going to add one and one to get two. Tuxcitto excels in obedience training when in sight or when his master is around. All I have to do is show him what I want him to do and then repeat it for a few days and he nails it after that. His ability to learn has always been obvious from the first day we brought him home.

But he also learns on his own. We have a good-sized front and back yard. And both dogs (I have an older female dog named Spoofy) know that they can do anything they want as long as it’s in our yard. We live in a small community and have lots of neighbors with dogs. From time to time one of them comes over for a visit.

No problem there except the temptation for our dogs to go run with the visiting dogs is too much to handle sometimes. Since most neighbors are dog owners this is not a problem. Except that my dogs are supposed to stay in my yard. That’s the rule. But we all know rules are made to be broken.

So one day a friend’s dog comes over to play and Tuxcitto follows him back to his yard. I happen to see this and go out and call Tuxcitto to come home. Tuxcitto comes back and everything is fine. I look back out a few minutes later and no Tuxcitto. So this time I call him home and bring him into the house.

If he can’t follow the rules, inside he goes. I go about my daily tasks and forget about it. Some time later I glance out the window and to my surprise, there’s Tuxcitto out in the front yard. And along with him are our two inside cats. Both these cats stay inside since they are both scared of their own shadows.

After a quick look around, I see that the back bedroom sliding glass door is open. Great, Tuxcitto has learned how to open the sliding glass door. This is not a good thing since we have several around our house. And although it’s no big deal for Tuxcitto to get out, the cats are a whole different issue. So I close the sliding glass door and go round up the animals and bring them inside.

Knowing that Tuxcitto will gladly give another demonstration of his new trick, I walk out another door to the backyard and wait. Within minutes I see him use his paws on the end of the door and pull it open. It took him about 5 seconds. Did I mention that he all ready knows how to open doors with doorknobs? He learned that trick in his second week at the house.

Now I have a challenge in that it’s much easier to teach Tuxcitto how to do something rather than teach him not to do something. So now I had to figure out a way to teach Tuxcitto not to open the door. One way that I’ve had some good success with is to demonstrate a certain result that he doesn’t like when he fails to follow my commands.

So I started with showing him the door, then telling him no. Tuxcitto understands no, so I believe he understood that the door was not something he was to go near in the future. But that doesn’t always work when I’m not present to reinforce the command.

So I then locked the door and both Tuxcitto and I went back to the other part of the house. I don’t know if he went back and tried to open the door that day but I believe he might have knowing his nature. A few days went by and I decided to test his memory.

I work out of a home office so the dogs and the cats generally follow me around all day. If I’m in the office they usually come in and lay down near me. If I go to the kitchen, or anywhere else, they follow me. So I set up the test by going back into the back bedroom and unlocking the door and going out into the back yard.

I came back in and did not lock the sliding glass door. I then went back to my office, with all in tow. So now I keep a close eye on Tuxcitto to see if he would make his move. I’ve made the mistake before of under estimating his intelligence and I’m not going there again.

Sure enough, after a little while he got up and looked at me, and I ignored him, and he sauntered off. As soon as he went down the back hall I knew where he was going. I quickly slipped out another door and went to stand out of sight but close to the outside of the back bedroom sliding door.

I heard him start trying to slide the door back and walked up close enough to be in direct sight when he came out the door. As soon as the door opened I said his name and then told him no in a very stern manner. He froze, caught in the act. I came in through the door and told him no again and sent him to his couch. When he does something he’s not supposed to he gets sent to his couch, which is leather I might add so it’s not too harsh a punishment.

We went through this ritual about 3 more times before he figured out that it was a trap. I don’t care if he doesn’t open the door because I told him no or because he thinks I’m waiting outside to catch him. Either way he understands that you don’t go open that sliding glass door.

From time to time I do catch him looking or even walking up to the sliding glass door but he doesn’t try to open it. The crazy thing about this whole deal is he can go outside anytime he wants. All he needs to do is go sit by the front door. I let the dogs out many times each day, whenever they want.

Now if I could just get Tuxcitto to resist the temptation to go out of the yard I would be overjoyed. But I know that that may be too much for his personality to handle so I cut him some slack. After all we all have our weak spots and his are few.

« Previous Page — Next Page »