Excitatory & Submissive Urination: Dog Training Secrets

Excitatory & Submissive Urination: Dog Training Secrets - A veterinarian explains how to train dogs that pee when they get excited or afraid. Learn how to control these common dog behavior problems.

Potty training your dog can be difficult enough, but it’s even harder when you have to deal with spontaneous accidents. Some dogs will urinate when they get excited (excitatory urination). Others urinate when they are feeling insecure or nervous, as a sign of submission (submissive urination). Both problems can be dealt with if you work at it, said Dr. Bryan Welty, veterinarian in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Dog Training Help for a Dog with Excitatory Urination

A dog with excitatory urination will urinate when it becomes excited or happy. Often when an owner comes home from work, the dog is so happy that it will lose bladder control. Excitatory urination is very common with puppies, and most outgrow it. However, they don’t outgrow it overnight.

The best success is accomplished simply by changing the routine when you come inside, said Dr. Welty. If you’re like most people, you make a big deal out of your entrance into the house, which causes the dog to become more excited. He recommends that you ignore the dog when you first come home. “It’s simple, but it’s hard to do,” he said. “Go in, go put the mail on the table, put the keys away, then open the back door and tell the dog to go outside and go to the bathroom.” When the dog comes back in, that’s when you get excited and play with the dog.

In order for this training method to work, every family member must participate. It’s not going to do any good if the parents ignore the dog when they get home from work but the kids get excited to see the dog when they come home from school.

“It does work rather effectively. It just takes time; it takes patience; it takes some carpet cleaning, whether you like it or not, but it definitely does help,” Dr. Welty concluded.

Dog Training Tips for a Dog with Submissive Urination

A much more common problem is submissive urination, in which a dog urinates as a defensive response when it gets scared. Commonly this behavior is seen when a stranger comes to the house. Urinating is a sign of submission in a dog pack. Because the dog feels insecure around the stranger, it will become upset