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

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. We can take her out immediately and she will pee some more, in other
words she isn't
just dumping her bladder. We have taken her to the vet and she is fine.

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

We can put her in her crate and she is fine - she has never peed or pooped
in her crate, even
when left in her crate for hours at a time (as when we are out at work)

She is a very active dog and likes to go outside. I have observed that if
she is taken outside
quite a lot during the day - like, almost hourly - she doesen't seem to pee
in the house as much, but
at this point it is a trust issue - none of us can trust she won't pee if we
turn our back on her when she
is out of her crate. 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.

Both my wife and I have grown up with dogs and we don't mind an occassional
mess and we understand
a dog is going to pee on the floor if they aren't let out when they need to
go. But, this is getting rediculous.
We can't have a dog that will pee on the floor every 2 hours when free to
run about the place,
but is perfectly able to hold it for 4-5 hours if crated, and doesen't pee
if lying on our bed, sofa, etc.
We feel sure that she is turning this pee on the floor thing into some sort
of power struggle/attention
getting mechanism. But she gets plenty of attention already - when we are
home in the evening we
are always petting her or letting her lie on the sofa when we are watching
TV, and our kids pay her
a lot of attention when they are home from school.

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

Ted

On 2008-12-01 19:16:11 -0500, "Ted Mittelstaedt" said:

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

Maybe she isn't fine.

I assume you did at least a urine test. Is she spayed? Could she have
spay incontinence? Is this submissive peeing?

Yelling at her will not do any good.

You need to use a special enzyme cleaner to really get rid if the smell
of urine.

I would also highly recommend that you do training with your dog to
build her confidence.

Good luck.

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

"Dale Atkin" wrote in message
news:Ll1Zk.1794$si6.1429@edtnps83...
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.


Every time she pooped outdoors we praised her, "good doggie" the usual
thing.
I'm sure it provided lots of amusement to passers by to see us saying "good
poopie" "good doggie" and so on to the dog when she just took a dump or
peed outside. The few times she pooped in the house we immediately moved
the poop outside and made sure that when we took her out she smelled it.

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 wasn't given a list by the vet. The ved did find giardia which we had to
give her 5 mg of this white stuff for 7 days to get rid of. I also had her
tested for heartworm and put her on heartworm meds. We don't have
a large incidence of heartworm in our area, but the meds are so cheap
espically if you get them online that it's kind of pennywise/pound foolish
to not do it.


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.


She has no problems peeing outside, whether on leash or not. Quite often
when
I take her out (I usually take her out in the evening) we won't have walked
more
than 100 feet before she pees in the grass strip between the sidewalk and
the
street.

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.


The one time I tried putting her on a leash inside, within 5 minutes she had
chewed through it. (obviously I wasn't watching her) After that I managed
to
find an old metal chain leash
at a secondhand store. (I don't understand why all the leashes you see in
the stores today are fabric straps, but what do I know) She likes chewing
and has her rubber chew toys and we also give her a raw bone (beef
knuckle, generally) every 3-4 days, so along with the rubber toys she
usually has a few old bones around that we haven't tossed out yet.

We caught her testing the table leg a few times and scolded her and
that seems to have taken care of it. She is also very good off leash, will
come when called and all of that.

If we had the time to constantly keep a close eye on her when we are in
the house we wouldn't have this problem. But there's only so many hours
in the day - I get home around 6pm and go to bed at 10pm - to do that
would require me watching her constantly for 4 hours in the evening, and
it's just out of the question. We have to do mundane things like eat, wash
dishes, put kids to bed, pay bills, etc. not to mention walking the dog in
the evenings. It would be nice to work
at one of those fantasy jobs that the people in the soap operas work at
where
they seem to have unlimited time to do whatever, but training that depends
on
that is simply unrealistic for most people.

In general in the evening we don't have this problem. We have to
crate her during dinner because the kids will feed her scraps under the
table otherwise, but once dinner is over we let her out, and she is
available to interact with the family. Generally around 9pm she is
satisfied
to lie down on the sofa. We take her out once when I get home and once
later before bed and she is fine with that, and we have no problems with
peeing in the evening.

We also do not feed her after 5pm and we stop putting food in her bowl
around 3pm, she generally finishes it off before 5. She has water all of
the
time, of course. We have had rats before in this house (sewer break in
the neighborhood, and the house was built in 1911) and everything
edible is either stored in steel or stored outside (where the rats can
fight the possums for it) We never allow uneaten dog food in her
bowl overnight.

Most of the peeing seems to happen in the morning or afternoon, when
my wife is distracted with taking care of the kids. That is one of the
problems
as well.

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.


Well I am hoping that that is it.

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?


I don't know. I'll call the vet and ask about this. Perhaps they
didn't do as good a job as I had assumed.

What kind of 'posture' does she assume when she pees?
Could it be painful for her to pee?

I don't think so. Her posture is the typical bitch-squat posture, it
doesen't
seem any different than any other bitches I've seen or lived with, and it
is no different inside or outside.

How have you let her know the right place to pee?

:-) Other than peeing myself (not really feasible in the city) where
I want her to pee, and praising her when she does pee outside, I
don't know what else I can do.

Does she always pee on the same kind of surface?

Not really. In the house she has never peed on anything other than
the carpet, but we have wall to wall carpeting except in the kitchen.
Outside, she has peed on grass and leaves on grass.

We live a block from an elementary school with a large field, so
when we take her out, we generally go there and let her off leash so
she can run. Everyone else with dogs in the neighborhood does this
also and in the evenings after the field is opened to the public there's
usually 3-4 of us with our dogs out there playing ball-chuck or
whatever. She loves that time, her favorite thing is chasing larger
dogs, and she is fast enough to keep up (and, outrun the fatter ones)

In the same place?

That is semi-random. Right now we have her confined to the kitchen, living
& dining
room. She has peed a couple times in the bedrooms, and isn't allowed in
them
unless very closely supervised. There aren't a lot of places to pee where
she
is allowed access to, so she tends to stay in the same area when she
pees, but not always.

How have you cleaned this space?

We blot it up then spray on Fabrese (probably spelled that wrong) I
don't think it's an enzyme/organic animal deodorizor, any suggestions
you have would be appreciated. Fortunately, the carpets had been
needing to be cleaned right before we got her and we have delayed
doing this until we were sure there would be no accidents.

If the same place, can you restrict access to that space?

Not easily. One place she peed was 6 inches from the front door.

Was she spayed when she came to the shelter, or did the shelter spay her?


We have a vet receipt that was in her file that states she was spayed.

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).


It's very difficult to get her to pee by just walking 5 steps from the porch
to the yard and just standing there. She rarely does it even when she needs
to go.
We have to start walking down the sidewalk and if she needs to go she will
pee within 20 steps or so. And we have -never- got her to poop unless
we walk her at least a block.

Part of the problem is that my wife, who
supervises her during the day (when she is home) is rather hesitant (in my
opinion) to use the crate. Ruby (the dog) doesen't like being crated when
there's anything interesting going on in the house and if put into the crate
will sometimes whine to get out. The crate is right in the kitchen which is
pretty close to most of the activity in the house, so she is able to see and
be near us when she is in the crate. I always crate her when we go to bed,
so she sleeps in the crate. Generally she is happy enough to be crated at
night. During the day, when my wife knows she will be gone for more than
4 hours at a time, she will put a fresh bone in the crate to keep the dog
occupied. At this point we always crate her when the house is going to
be empty.

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


Will do.

Ted

Dale

"montana wildhack" wrote in message
news:2008120120230816807-montana@wildhackcominvalid...
On 2008-12-01 19:16:11 -0500, "Ted Mittelstaedt"
said:

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

Maybe she isn't fine.

I assume you did at least a urine test. Is she spayed? Could she have
spay incontinence? Is this submissive peeing?


How would I tell spay incontinence?

I don't think it's submissive peeing. I've seen dogs do that before and
I've never seen her squat when anyone has approached her. She isn't
easily rattled. We think part of her heritage must be a hunting breed, I've
seen her stand there and have a truck horn go off unexpectedly that
caused me to jump, and she ignores it, she also goes wild when she
sees a bird or a squirrl and I've seen her go into a point at a tree with
squirrls in it. I've also seen her snap at the throat of a larger dog that
was
doing dominance jumping on her that was obviously crossing the doggy line.

Yelling at her will not do any good.


By "yelling" I really don't mean the yell like a fishwife nagging, I mean
saying her name very sharply and loudly when catching her doing it.

You need to use a special enzyme cleaner to really get rid if the smell
of urine.

I would also highly recommend that you do training with your dog to
build her confidence.


I really don't think it's a confidence thing. When we first got her she
was a lot more timid and very demanding of attention, but since then
she has become a lot more confident. I just don't think that it's a
confidence issue with a dog that the second you leave the kitchen
she is jumping up on the table and walking around looking for
scraps to eat. (we caught her doing that once, but she is of the size
that when she stands on her hind legs her head is at the stove and
table top level, and she will definitely inspect those areas for good
things to eat when we aren't looking)

Good luck.


Thanks!

Ted

In article ,
"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote:

The one time I tried putting her on a leash inside, within 5 minutes she had
chewed through it. (obviously I wasn't watching her) After that I managed
to
find an old metal chain leash
at a secondhand store. (I don't understand why all the leashes you see in
the stores today are fabric straps, but what do I know)

Leashes of fabric or leather are much preferred for walking and
training. Chain leashes weigh on a dog's collar and teaching walking on
a loose leash makes less sense with that pressure.

If we had the time to constantly keep a close eye on her when we are in
the house we wouldn't have this problem. But there's only so many hours
in the day - I get home around 6pm and go to bed at 10pm - to do that
would require me watching her constantly for 4 hours in the evening, and
it's just out of the question. We have to do mundane things like eat, wash
dishes, put kids to bed, pay bills, etc. not to mention walking the dog in
the evenings.

Join the club. My dogs are pretty much WITH me when I'm doing those
things. Warming my feet, hanging out nearby.


In general in the evening we don't have this problem. We have to
crate her during dinner because the kids will feed her scraps under the
table otherwise,

That is a KID training issue. Teach BOTH of them table manners!

We also do not feed her after 5pm and we stop putting food in her bowl
around 3pm, she generally finishes it off before 5.

Free feeding is a really bad idea for a dog with elimination problems
(and IMO, not a good idea for most dogs). Start by scheduling her
feedings and giving her a limited time to eat.

Most of the peeing seems to happen in the morning or afternoon, when
my wife is distracted with taking care of the kids. That is one of the
problems
as well.

There are several options depending on the age of your children, their
needs that need attending, and the layout of your home. Keeping the dog
WITH the group, in some way, is the most helpful. That can be tethered
to an object or mom, gated in the same room (or doors shut to keep her
in the same room) etc.

You also mentioned a 2 hour window of her urinating and when she has
peed on the floor. Typically, MOST dogs (and especially young ones)
here have gone out at 6, peed, then fed (expected to eat all of the
food) then out again for more pee and poop, by 6:15. With a puppy or
not fully trained dog, I would have them out again at 7:15. Not too
hard if you have a fenced yard, but quick no matter what. Then again
before people leave for the day. How long is she crated during the day?
Sometimes, having to "hold it" for long periods can mess with the
natural rhythm of the bladder.

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com

On 2008-12-02 00:53:26 -0500, "Ted Mittelstaedt" said:

How would I tell spay incontinence?

She's really young for that sort of thing, but incontinence is usually
seen as "leaking".

Thank you so much for coming back and having a dialogue.

One poster had recommended tethering her to you as one might do when
doing initial housetraining to ensure that you get her outside if she
starts sniffing. This would also eliminate counter-surfing when you
aren't looking.

Among other things, if she is favoring the carpet, she is probably
still smelling urine: hers or another dog's. You can get a small black
light at pet stores to check for urine. That's where the enzyme
cleaners are your friend.

It does sound like you need to work on training! That can help with
several issues you are experiencing.

Please keep us informed of your progress.

You can not delay cleaning a carpet after a dog has an accident.

Because it's not being cleaned immediately the dog smells the urine and will
keep going back to that spot again and again. I would suggest getting an
enzyme cleaner and invest in a hand held rug scrubber and get to work on the
places she's had accidents. You will never get anywhere with the peeing
issue if you don't clean the carpets. I may take multiple scrubbings to get
the odor out. I had one particular spot that the pup kept going to. I
scrubbed it 5 days in a row to make sure I got all the odor out and that
finally eliminated the problem.

Celeste

Listen to Howe - he's an expert in this area since he's also a bitch
who won't stop peeing on the floor.

On Dec 3, 10:40*pm, wrote:
Listen to Howe - he's an expert in this area since he's also a bitch
who won't stop peeing on the floor.

And you should see him **** all over himself when asked to prove his
bully behavior in person...wow...I wouldn't want to sit in his chair!
Not to mention he hasn't had his annual bath this year. Man - what a
stench! And don't get me started on the bug hive in that ridiculously
stupid beard! And that hat and clothing gives new meaning to "Flea
Market." Unfortunately, he's BRINGING fleas there...