Submission Urinating Versus A Garden Variety "happy Wee"

[poodlefan]

Oh, and you sooooo need to read this thread

Bwahahaha that post is awesome. I'm reading it now - and it should TOTALLY be a sticky post so that daunted newbies like me don't feel so bad :D

I just had a read and had a very good laugh! You people feed your dogs maccas??? I don't even feed myself that!

When you spend as much time travelling around the state at all hours of the day and night as dogsports and show folk do, you tend to end up at Maccas quite a bit. I'm a regular at my local one at about 5.00 am on quite a few weekend mornings as I head out to shows. Gotta love the fact that you can get a decent cup of coffee on drive through.

Its the big franchises with drive throughs are the only places I know of where you can get food and drink on a steaming hot day without havinig to leave the dogs alone in the car or where you can easily park a dog trailer. In summer, there aren't many other options if you are travelling by yourself and can't leave the dogs unattended.

Maccas Gundagai looks like a dog show car park on some weekends!

Edited July 14, 2010 by poodlefan

[FHRP]

Don't want to scare you koalathebear but I have a 3 year old dog who still excitement/submissive wees When I get home I can not pat or talk to him without first making sure he's been outside for a wee. We still have some weeing in the house about once a week Thank goodness for no carpet, my shoes have copped it often though. Most puppies do grow out of it, every other dog I've had has! I don't believe it is a lack of confidence in my dog, he is an excellent, solid competition dog, he just tends to be a bit over the top and extremely excitable

[poodlefan]

Don't want to scare you koalathebear but I have a 3 year old dog who still excitement/submissive wees When I get home I can not pat or talk to him without first making sure he's been outside for a wee. We still have some weeing in the house about once a week Thank goodness for no carpet, my shoes have copped it often though. Most puppies do grow out of it, every other dog I've had has! I don't believe it is a lack of confidence in my dog, he is an excellent, solid competition dog, he just tends to be a bit over the top and extremely excitable :D

But Polly is spethal FHRP.

[koalathebear]

Don't want to scare you koalathebear but I have a 3 year old dog who still excitement/submissive wees

:p

Fortunately for us, Elbie's wees are growing extremely rare ... But thank you for the warning

[megan_]

When Fergus was a pup the dog walker came over and I was home sick. Fergus was so happy to see her and was jumping up and down, she crouched down to say hello - and he did a wee in her face! It was very hard not to laugh.

[VJB]

Heidi has only ever done a wee when scared. Twice now, once with my old vet, and now with her new one. The first fear wee she did was when she was about 6 months old and I got her a toy that had a empty plastic bottle inside it. It made a crunch sound, and she ran down the driveway peeing herself as she ran. I was dumbfounded, as she'd played with empty bottles before, but I guess this one was in disguise and gave her a real fright.

I have seen other dogs that wee with greeting in an excited way though.

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

I got her a toy that had a empty plastic bottle inside it. It made a crunch sound, and she ran down the driveway peeing herself as she ran

Ghost bottle... (eek)

[corvus]

It occurred to me that I have Karen Overall's "Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Small Animals" text book sitting here on my desk, so I looked up submissive and excitement urination. She says the difference is in the body language and suggests for submissive urination to treat it by ignoring it and rewarding deferential behaviour that does not involve urinating, like sitting. She makes some comments about how dogs can end up being submissive urinators and suggests it may often (although not always) be because people have forced them into submissive positions or excessively dominated them in other ways.

Excitement urination she said most dogs grow out of, but if they don't she suggests doing her protocol for relaxation to address the excitement itself and teach them to do something incompatible, like lying down.

[Tassie]

Thought it might be useful to put in a link to the Karen Overall Relaxation Protocol.

Protocol for Relaxation

[jacqui835]

Elbie's five and a bit months old and he gets excited when visitors arrive. For a couple of people (my brother and my dad), he'll do a happy wee We assumed it's because he knows from previous visits that they'll play with him and be his buddy. At puppy class and obedience class, they told us it's not uncommon for puppies to do a happy wee when they're excited - there were quite a few happy wees during the beginning of puppy class. The happy wees are largely managed now because if the visitors ignore him and let him settle, he generally will just bounce around and there will be no unwelcome wees.

The thing was yesterday when we had a trainer come to visit, Elbie did what we thought was a happy wee but after a frown and a shake of the head, it was diagnosed as 'submission urinating' that is apparently caused by fear/being overwhelmed/being stressed by a situation.

The thing that puzzled me was that from what I could see, Elbie was not afraid or overwhelmed, he was just really happy to see a visitor. I could tell because when he's really happy, he doesn't just wag his tail - he does this hilarious thing where his entire bum wiggles so much it's like his tail will fall off.

So - how to tell the difference?

My dog did the same thing. A wagging tail shows only a level of excitement. When your dog sees the visitors, does he put his ears right back and put on a super cute face? My dog did the same, and we realised it was just when people gave him attention, he was worried about what they would do to him, so he needed to be as submissive as possible. The more attention they gave him, the worse he would get. At first everyone was like, oh he's just so excited and so happy to see us, but if you watch the dog really closely, you can see that they are responding to a potentially threatening situation. New people entering pack territory is a scary concept for a young pup who hasn't been with his family for too long. I know it doesn't seem like it, but ignoring the dog is actually the kinder thing to do until they settle down and realise that no-one is going to really demand anything of them or threaten them in any way when they come to visit. They learn in time to read you better, and of course get more comfortable in their situation, so it's a behaviour that generally resolves itself, especially quickly if you ignore the dog until the visitors have been there for a while and made it clear that they're not there to challenge anyone lol.

EDIT: of course the puppy can also find new situations exciting, so this combined with some fear can often lead to a lapse in bladder muscle control. Again, this improves with age.

Edited July 15, 2010 by jacqui835