Dear Family Pupz,

This has happened a couple times now, so I need to figure out how to deal with it. I have a 1 year old Aussiedoodle, and he was fully housetrained when I got him.

We have a fair number of male and female visitors to our apartment, and he get excited but has never had any accidents.

However, EVERY TIME my sister comes over, my dog has urinated in the house pretty soon after she comes inside. He's not lifting his leg like he's marking, but actually squatting like he does when he just has to pee.

Yesterday, it happened again right when my sister came in (on the rug!), despite the fact that I had taken him out to pee pretty soon before she came over.

Since I've never had to deal with housetraining before, I'm at a bit of a loss what to do here. Taking him out to pee doesn't seem to help, and he's not giving me any warning that he needs to go.

Any ideas would be appreciated!

-

My oh my!

Whenever I get a letter about housetrained dogs that are peeing indoors, the first question I ask myself is whether I think that the urination is occurring due to anxiety, excitement, or marking behavior.

The fact that your dog is not lifting his leg to go pee is a telltale sign, as you mentioned, that he’s not doing it to scent mark common things that dogs mark.

Additionally, the fact that your dog is not peeing in your home due to the presence of any of the other visitors you’ve had in your home is a good sign that the presence of other people, generally, do not cause anxiety-driven peeing behavior.

Therefore, I believe that your dog is just REALLY EXCITED to see your sister, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your sister is probably also REALLY EXCITED to see your dog when she comes over, perhaps even more so than any of the other visitors you’ve had in the past.

So, the long-term fix I would recommend for this issue would be to ask your sister to reduce a bit of her excitement level when she enters your home and sees your dog by keeping her greeting a bit more calm and modest, and simultaneously practicing polite greetings with him, such as “sit” and “shake” as soon as she comes inside to help reduce some of that immediate overexcitement that’s leading to the peeing behavior.

In the meantime, my mind-blowingly simple fix to this frustrating problem is…to have your dog greet your sister OUTSIDE OF YOUR HOME first before coming back inside together. That way, your dog AND your sister can be as excited to greet each other as their heart’s desire.

Happy Training!