Comments interspersed.

"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote in message
...
Hi All,

We are at our wits end on this.

We got a 1 year old German Shorthair/terrier mix about a month ago.
(shelter dog) She
is about half the size of a typical black lab.

When we got her she wasn't housebroken all that well (what do you expect
I guess)

We applied the usual housebreak training tricks and got her to stop
pooping in the house.

Can you outline 'the usual tricks'? Want to know if we're talking about the
same thing.

But,
she seems to almost be fighting us about the peeing.

I wouldn't assume that from what you've written (although I can understand
how you might draw that conclusion, I'd not be drawing it myself from what
you've written)


Her usual day is we get up at 6am and let her out of her crate, then take
her immediately
outside where she pees and poops. Then we go inside and eat breakfast,
shower and such.

Generally sometime before 8am she has peed on the floor. It's maybe
about a half tablespoon
or so.

So it doesn't sound like her bladder is full. She's peeing for some other
reason.

We have taken her to the vet and she is fine.

Specifically what tests have you done?


I've caught her in the act and yelled at her, so have some other family
members.

You've got to be very careful with this kind of thing. One likely outcome is
that she will simply learn not to pee when you're watching.

She definitely
knows she isn't supposed to be doing this - if I put her on the leash to
go out and even go near
whatever spot she peed at she will avoid it. And she is very sneaky about
when she pees - she
only pees if she thinks that nobody is paying attention to her.

See above comment. She may simply have learned that peeing when you're
watching is a bad idea, not that peeing in the house is a bad idea in
general. In fact that could be part of her issue.

So we are putting her in her crate more and more, even when people are at
home. This isn't good for her I am sure and we don't like it either.

One possible 'compromise' is tether training. Put her on leash when you're
home. Keep a close eye on her, and watch her for signs of 'doing the potty
dance', and then rush outside and praise/treat her when she pees.

We feel sure that she is turning this pee on the floor thing into some
sort of power struggle/attention
getting mechanism.

Again, I wouldn't draw that conclusion from what you've told me. Its
tempting, but I think its far more likely that she just hasn't generalized
to the must pee outside of the house rule.

Any suggestions on how to curb this would be most appreciated!

Ted

I'd like to revisit the medical tests you've done. I assume this included a
urine stick. What looking at it under the microscope?

What kind of 'posture' does she assume when she pees?
Could it be painful for her to pee?
How have you let her know the right place to pee?
Does she always pee on the same kind of surface?
In the same place?
How have you cleaned this space?
If the same place, can you restrict access to that space?
Was she spayed when she came to the shelter, or did the shelter spay her?

My course of action right now (assuming we can rule out medical, which would
be my first inclination), would be to crate her when ever you can't watch
her, and keep her on leash when ever she's out of her crate. When you think
she might be getting ready to pee, take her outside, treat/praise etc. every
time she pees where she's supposed to (maybe even specify one particular
surface for her to pee on, like dirt or rocks so that she can definitely
tell the difference).

Hope that helps, and be sure to keep us in the loop,

Dale