Weird Question

[Shakti]

A friend's male neutered Standard Poodle shows no signs of either fear or aggression when meeting other dogs and sniffs politely etc but then when the new dog is no longer paying attention to him he sneakily lifts his leg against them and urinates!!

He also does this to his owner after she has corrected him for something. He is very calm and almost *sneaky* about it and there is no other show of emotion that either she or I can discern.

What is going on???

[corvus]

I would say displacement. It may look sneaky because the dog is feeling stressed and doesn't want to draw attention to themselves. Erik is the king of displacement behaviours. I've never seen him do that one, but many others he do look like reaching for a security blanket. He looks calm when he's doing them because doing them is calming. If that makes sense?

If he was my dog, I would work on the assumption that he is stressed about meeting other dogs and about being yelled at. Try this one for an experiment to test the theory: Next time he meets a dog, keep them both on leash, start with him a good 20m away, and see what he does. Does he look at the other dog? Stare? Sniff the ground? If he looks comfortable, take a step or two and see if he wants to go closer. Let him choose how fast and how close he wants to go.

[Ali]

but then when the new dog is no longer paying attention to him he sneakily lifts his leg against them and urinates!!

I couldnt help but laugh....

is it urinating or marking? I'm not sure if its one and the same in this case... but very peculiar

[OSoSwift]

I have had something similar and it was caused by stress.

I was doing agility with Lewis and all was going fantastically until I accidentally trod on his toes hard. He continued but was not happy and didn't do an obstical and went to leave, I called him back and he didn't really want to as I had trod on hi foot. He went back thorugh the tunnel as it was somehitn he found fun and the easist of all thyen lifted his leg as he came out the other end.

This is a dog who has never lifted his leg in an 'inappropriate' place in his life - ever!

Next week at training we went to do some agility obsticles and he came out of his crate but didn't want to go near them and wanted to get back into his crate which had been shut. He wentaround it a couple of times ( I was calling him all sugar trying to get him to come away) and he then went to lift his leg on the crate which he got growled at for and didn't end up peeing.

I knew than that he was much more unhappy than I had thought and it was going to take work to get him back out there, happy and trusting me. It has taken 8 weeks and we are not 100% past it yet.

He has never pee'd inside, against crates or other chairs etc and only ever pee's on trees etc. He is peeing because he is highly stressed. This may be the case with this dog. I would efinately play very close attention to his body language and what he is saying.

[Shakti]

Thanks very much = yes you are 100% right = we tried Corvus' experiment and it showed that the dog was far more stressed when meeting other dogs than his owner had realised. She is now going to contact a behaviourist for some professional help - thanks again!

[Dracdog]

I had a Kelpie when I was a kid that would wee on Dad whenever he ould go crook at me