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Another dog problem — I need help!


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We have a 16-month-old Maltese who is the cutest, sweetest, funniest, smartest dog anyone could ask for. She's generally very obedient and trainable and we are all madly in love with her — but she pees on the furniture all. the. time. [ETA: by "all the time" I mean several times/wk, not several times/day] When we got her at 12 weeks, she had been "trained" by the breeder to pee on those pee-pad things. You know, the ones that look just like rectangular white sofa cushions and bed pillows? :glare:

 

It took a LONG time (like a year) to get her housebroken to the point where she would always go outside rather than just squat and pee wherever she happened to be when she felt the urge. She gets lots of walks every day, plus she has a small fenced area outside she can go to whenever she wants (we have a doggie door). She never pees on the floor any more — she just has a thing for sofa cushions, towels, pillows, bath mats, blankets, etc. Any kind of bedding, really. It's driving me nuts! We have a gate to keep her out of the bedrooms, but every time DD7 accidently leaves it open, she will sneak in and pee on one of the beds, or on a bath mat or throw rug or something. Sometimes she pees on the sofa cushions while no one is looking, for no apparent reason. Any time she's caught in the act she's scolded and locked outside. We immediately wash the soiled material (thank goodness for slipcovers!) in hot water and spray the cushions with antibacterial spray and one of those "no pet" sprays. Nothing has worked.

 

Any suggestions?????

 

ETA: That's her in my avatar, after one of her static electricity experiments. :lol:

 

Jackie

Edited by Corraleno
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Ok, first rule out anything medical like cystitis. Have the vet do a urinalysis. I know, probably not, but it could be a bladder stone or and it would be awful to keep trying to train her when she needs a medical fix. Next, when you clean the couch or what not you need to use a cleaner that "eats" the urine. I like Nature's Miracle but there are other brands. And it needs more than a spritz, you need to saturate the urine. Don't use an antibacterial cleaner first if your urine remover is bacterial based.

 

Training wise you need to create a substrate preference for grass. She currently prefers bedding. So...keep that gate up to prevent access and set up a schedule to let the puppy out. Treat her like she is 8 weeks old. Take her out after she eats, after she wakes up from a nap, after she plays, after she drinks a lot of water, and as often in between as you can. Someone has to actually go outside with her and watch her to see if she pees. If she does they need to praise her quietly as she is going and then give her a super yummy treat right when she finishes. Do not wait until you get inside to give it or you are rewarding coming inside instead of pottying. If she has been too startled by being scolded when caught in the house it may take a while before she feels comfortable going in front of you, but it hopefully that isn't the case.

 

Hope this helps, it is almost 3am and I'm only awake because the stupid cats knocked over a musical toy and woke the baby.

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Ok, first rule out anything medical like cystitis. Have the vet do a urinalysis. I know, probably not, but it could be a bladder stone or and it would be awful to keep trying to train her when she needs a medical fix. Next, when you clean the couch or what not you need to use a cleaner that "eats" the urine. I like Nature's Miracle but there are other brands. And it needs more than a spritz, you need to saturate the urine. Don't use an antibacterial cleaner first if your urine remover is bacterial based.

Oh, I didn't even think about that! I do saturate the cushion with Petzyme, but the antibacterial spray may be "undoing" the effect. I'll see if I can get some Nature's Miracle, too.

 

Training wise you need to create a substrate preference for grass. She currently prefers bedding.

Unfortunately, we don't have any grass, we have 3 acres of dirt and gravel. :( The area she has full-time access to (via the doggie door) is gravel & dirt, fully shaded by large trees, so there's often lots of leaves there as well. She does seem to prefer peeing in the leaves, now that I think about it.

 

Treat her like she is 8 weeks old. Take her out after she eats, after she wakes up from a nap, after she plays, after she drinks a lot of water, and as often in between as you can. Someone has to actually go outside with her and watch her to see if she pees. If she does they need to praise her quietly as she is going and then give her a super yummy treat right when she finishes. Do not wait until you get inside to give it or you are rewarding coming inside instead of pottying. If she has been too startled by being scolded when caught in the house it may take a while before she feels comfortable going in front of you, but it hopefully that isn't the case.

The method you described is how I initially trained her; I carried a little baggie of treats with me at all times and gave her one instantly whenever she peed or pooped outside. She's very smart and generally very motivated by treats — she learned sit, up, speak, come, sing, and fetch in about 15 minutes each, yet when it came to housebreaking, it took forever! The problem is that she does go outside to pee 99% of the time on her own, so it's hard to "catch her in the act" in order to praise her, since she spends a lot of time out there anyway, watching people and horses come and go. I just can't figure out what's going on in that little head of hers that suddenly makes her think peeing on the sofa is a good idea! Or why, every time she sees the gate left open, even though she knows she is not allowed in the bedrooms, she will run down there and pee on something as quick as she can, before she gets caught and exiled!

 

ETA: She doesn't get scolded for it very often, because she rarely gets caught in the act. She never pees in the house if she knows someone is watching, she's very sneaky about it, which is why I suspect she's doing it on purpose for some reason. :confused:

 

Jackie

Edited by Corraleno
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Any more suggestions? Is it possible that she's marking things in the bedrooms to establish the space as hers, even though she's not supposed to be in there? (Do little female dogs even mark territory like that?)

 

Sometimes I wonder if I should give her access to the bedrooms on a leash, so it's not so exotic or exciting to sneak in there and pee — is that a reasonable idea or is it likely to make it worse? :confused:

 

Jackie

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Dogs don't pee in spite, or out of anger. If you think about it, they like pee and poop, so why would they think it would upset you? And yes, female dogs can mark. How long has this been going on? If it started suddenly I would really get her checked for a UTI or bladder stones.

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Dogs don't pee in spite, or out of anger. If you think about it, they like pee and poop, so why would they think it would upset you? And yes, female dogs can mark. How long has this been going on? If it started suddenly I would really get her checked for a UTI or bladder stones.

 

This just make me laugh because when I was a teen ager, I had a dog that peed out of spite. She never went in the house, except in my sister's room if my sister did something to make her mad. It was hilarious. She was my dog and if my sister was mean to her or scolded her for some reason, you could be she would sneak in her room in the next few hours and pee:lol::lol:

 

She was a great dog.

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Dogs don't pee in spite, or out of anger. If you think about it, they like pee and poop, so why would they think it would upset you? And yes, female dogs can mark. How long has this been going on? If it started suddenly I would really get her checked for a UTI or bladder stones.

She's always done it. Initially she just peed and pooped everywhere (as puppies do), and gradually she learned to go outside to do her business, but she has always retained the "option" (LOL) to pee on the sofa once in a while, and to pee on the beds/towels/throw rugs/etc. whenever she gets the chance.

 

The reason I think she knows it's "wrong" is because she will never do it if she knows someone is watching. She will dash into a bedroom or bathroom and then run out again, and if I go into the room she just ran out of, I can guarantee there's a wet spot somewhere! If I happen to walk in on her while she's peeing on a pillow or bath mat or something, she jumps like she knows she's been caught red-handed.

 

She's very very smart, and she knows how to get our attention — and how to avoid our attention if she stole food she shouldn't have, or wants to sneak into the bedrooms or something. If the four of us are all doing something that doesn't include her, she'll go get her loudest squeaky toy, sit right in front of us and squeak it 100 times/minute as loudly as possible until we look at her, then poke one of us to play. If her ball rolls under the sofa, she'll run and get someone, run back and forth from the person to the sofa, and "point" under the sofa with her nose. She stands on her hind legs and sings when DD7 plays violin, and she'll have whole conversations with us — she opens and closes her mouth and makes funny little sounds, complete with varied intonations, which really does look and sound like a person talking. She'll then pause and wait for you to respond, then repeat her part of the conversation. She's by far the smartest and most communicative dog I've ever had (although maybe I've just had really dumb dogs in the past, lol).

 

I definitely don't think she's doing it just to upset us or make us mad, but I do think she's doing it for a reason, not just that she can't be bothered walking to the dog door. I just can't figure out what the reason is — whether it's marking territory, a nostalgic fondness for peeing on things that look like the pee-pads of her puppyhood, or something else!

 

Jackie

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You know - mostly I give up trying to figure out how their brains work or what the heck they're thinking :lol:

 

I think it could be that she's stressed or anxious or marking (I have a female who marks - outside, thank heavens - but she's a serious marker. This is mine, and this is mine, and also this - is mine!!!!! :D) It could also be that this is a dog who has figured out that peeing & pooping outside is good, but has not quite yet fully figured out that peeing & pooping inside is really not good.

 

Regardless, I'd treat this the way I treat any dog who comes to stay here (& keep in mind that my fosters are outside roaming dogs who are not housetrained & some have been older dogs with years of doing what they please, where they please :glare:)

 

go back to the basics:

 

1) walk on leash, three times a day.

 

2) don't let her out in the yard unattended. Each time, someone needs to be out there & watching & rewarding appropriate elimination. I would not let her go out there to just play actually. If you think she needs a potty break, I'd take her on leash, let her potty, reward, take off leash & have a play session or just let her go sniff & explore.

 

3) tether to you while inside

 

Yes, it's all a PITA, but if you want to get this soiling in the house under control, it has to be done

 

Also do at least some of the exercises in http://www.dragonflyllama.com/%20dogs/Writing/LTD.html

 

Lastly, I would introduce what trainers call a No Reward Marker (NRM). I use the uh-uh sound (you know, what teens say instead of enunciating the word 'no' :)) if you catch her at it (& you should be able to catch her at it because you'll be keeping her either tethered or have an eagle eye on her at all times.) Some dogs need some clearer guidelines about THAT is good = Rewards = happy mommy; and THAT is bad = NRM = mommy not so happy.

 

 

& yes, clean with enzyme cleaners. I personally like to clean with a spray bottle with the dog in a down about 5 feet away from me. I like to have them see me putting MY scent (Petastic & then later Febreeze) all over my stuff. I don't grumble or get mad at them or ream them out - I just have them watch as I obliterate their smell.

 

I have absolutely NO basis for thinking this does anything except please my own ego but it's been working for me. :lol:

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Thank you for all those suggestions! She already gets 3 walks a day, but I wonder if we should be doing longer walks in "new" territory rather than just the same routine, mostly around our 3 acres? I'll implement the other things you suggested as well. I guess we should crate her when we go out, too?

 

Do you think it would reduce her urge to "mark" the bedrooms, if she was allowed to explore those rooms on a leash? I'm not sure if her reason for marking in there is because those are generally the only places she can do it without being seen, or if she marks those areas precisely because she's not allowed there and so she wants to make sure any other creatures who might be hiding in there know it's her territory? Or am I giving her too much credit for rational thought? :lol:

 

Jackie

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It could be marking, but it could also just be she likes to pee on soft things, as a preference that has held over since puppyhood. And soft things in the other room are safe to pee on because no one sees an yells at her. Letting her in there on a leash might help, and I don't see how it could hurt ;)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I’m very interested in this thread because I have a little dog (age 3) who also seems to prefer cushions, bedding or carpeting to do her business. We think she does it on purpose when she’s angry at us, but perhaps it is out of anxiety. If I need to be away from home overnight, she’ll go in the bed where I sleep. If my husband is out past her bedtime (7:30 pm), she’ll go somewhere on the carpet or furniture. It does make sense that anxiety is causing this. She seems to be afraid of a lot of things. We give her a lot of attention . . . how else can we reassure her so she doesn’t have as much anxiety?

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My suggestion: Pick a few area where she tends to pee most frequently or that you MOST don't want her to pee. Lay some strips of transparent packing tape, sticky side up in those places.

 

I had a cat who peed on our kitchen counter and a couple of times of jumping up there and getting entangled in the tape fixed that right up.

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