submissive peeing? or overexcited peeing?

[browndog]

Hi there,
Our 7 month old puppy pees whenever she greets someone (except me and my husband) If we are on a walk and someone wants to stop and say hi to her, she gets sooooo excited and can hardly contain herself and wiggles and jumps and carries on, and then proceeds to pee all over the admirer's shoes! Happens every single time we see someone. (seriously) I feel so bad when the person leaves and is wiping their shoe along the grass trying to wipe off the pee! Now I try to intercept quickly and blurt out "QUICK! Watch your feet - she's a pee-er!" Do puppies outgrow this? She has done it from the day we brought her home. Thanks for your help.

[lindamarie]

Oh wow.....I'll bet the person in the flip-flops really enjoys this little greeting!

Well.....this is a story common on the forum. Some dogs just really become so overly excited that they can't stop themselves.

These pups lack confidence and security for some unknown reason. Yet, if a pup has been abused, we know the reason for it.
As the pup grows and gains confidence, it will stop.

Has your pup learned the basic commands of sit, come, stay? Has she been through any obedience training?
The reason I ask, is that when a dog learns proper training and receives tons of praise for being good.....GGOD GIRL! They grow in confidence. They start to understand that YOU are the ALPHA and they begin to understand their position in the pack.
When a stranger approaches them, they feel insecure and frightened, so they lose control.

I copy/pasted this for you. See if it makes sense.


Submissive urination is the ultimate show of respect and deference for higher rank. It occurs frequently with young puppies who have not yet learned and perfected other social skills and means of showing respect. Submissive urination in adult puppies is usually a sign of insecurity. Often unsocialized and abused puppies will submissively urinate. Other puppies that engage in submissive urination may simply have not been shown that there are more acceptable ways to show respect, such as paw raising (shake hands) or hand licking (give a kiss).

Submissive urination may be present in overly sensitive or mistreated puppies because they feel the need to constantly apologize. This state is often caused by excessive or delayed punishment which frightens and confuses the puppy without teaching him how to make amends. The puppy resorts to the only way he knows to show respect and fear, by submissive urination. When your puppy submissively urinates, it is best to just ignore him. If you try to reassure him, he will think you are praising him for urinating and will urinate even more. If you scold him, he will feel an even greater need to apologize by urinating. Either reassurance or scolding will only make submissive urination worse.

Treatment of submissive urination must be directed towards building your puppy's confidence and showing him other ways to demonstrate respect. The quickest way to accomplish this is by teaching your puppy a few basic obedience exercises. A puppy that can earn praise by obeying a simple routine of "Come here, sit, shake hands," will soon develop self esteem and confidence. A confident puppy who can say, "Hello, Boss" by sitting and shaking hands does not feel the need to urinate at his owner's feet.

[browndog]

Thank you for the information. Yes, she knows her basic commands - sit, stay, down... She has been to puppy class and some obedience with a one on one trainer. She has never been scolded for doing it. We just ignore it, but she doesn't do it with us, only new people. Mostly it seems like she is just over-excited. I don't sense any fear from her .....ever! She is so confident...maybe sometimes even overly confident. She will run up to any dog and assume they want to play! She will run up to any person same thing. She is never usually afraid of any new experiences or anything. She LOVES going to the vet! Even after being spay and having thermometers up her butt. Nothing seems to phase this little girl! She doesn't calm down very easily. I think we need to work on a calming command. Massage seems to help. I will do more training with her and give her even more praise and see if this helps. Thanks!

On another note, I saw on another thread that you said that your Bogart sounded a lot like our Katey when he was a puppy, and that now he has turned into such a great therapy dog! That is so wonderful! When did you notice a calming down of excitability in Bogart? Was he over a year old? Katey has settled down a bit since being spay at 6 months. She is 7 months old now, but still has A LOT of energy. Her dog walker said he has never seen a dog with sooo much energy before!

Thanks for your help!

[jesstat]

Diego did the same exact thing when he was that age! Actually, he still has a couple people that he gets so excited to see that a little pee still slips out. Our vet told us that as long as he's not peeing on us, that it is probably just excitement and they will grow out of it. And he did (after about 7 months!). The gist of what I got from our vet was that dogs will generally be submissive to their owners before they are submissive to random strangers. The vet techs also said that they could tell by the way Diego greeted, it was excitement, not submission.

To deal with it, we just had to make sure to take Diego outside before we knew we were having people over and before we went into a building where new people would be. And we did a lot of yelling "Watch out" to strangers on the street too!

Hang in there, she will grow out of it! Just make sure not to yell at her when she does pee, as it could quickly turn into submissive urination...

[jodysh]

Malcolm piddles too when he's excited to see someone - including me. He's not quite 4 months old yet. He just started doing it in the last couple weeks.

[becka]

Sadie peed at people a few times when she was around 10-14 weeks old, but now she reserves that for dogs that she's really excited to see at the dog park. I've noticed that it's only when we first get to the park, so I think it's closer to excitement than submissive, but I imagine it's a little of both.

[lindamarie]

On another note, I saw on another thread that you said that your Bogart sounded a lot like our Katey when he was a puppy, and that now he has turned into such a great therapy dog! That is so wonderful! When did you notice a calming down of excitability in Bogart? Was he over a year old? Katey has settled down a bit since being spay at 6 months. She is 7 months old now, but still has A LOT of energy. Her dog walker said he has never seen a dog with sooo much energy before!

Thanks for your help!

We started Bogart's training as soon as he had all his shots. He was young and really was the class clown (although some were even more so....)
In the yard, in the middle of the winter, he would DEFY us and simply wouldn't come in on command. Instead, he'd do the doodle 500 around the yard looking at us with that look of HA!! Catch me if you can!
It wasn't funny after awhile.
So, we worked really hard with him at home and continued with obedience classes. We could start to see a difference at around 6 months.
At around 9 months, we go really serious and started the big time training.

We had private trainers come into the house and work with us. By the time he was a year old, he passed his CGC and was well on his way to pass all kinds of horrendous tests for service and therapy.
The most difficult was the one for the Hospital. Although Bogart wasn't stressed, we sure were when we saw what he had to do to become a Beaumont Hospital dog! WHEW! That was tough!

Please understand that Bogart is STILL full of that energy! In fact, he still enjoys testing us, so we have to go back to a week of rigid training. He still has that Tasmanian devil in him, but it was brought under control, so he knew when and when not to use that energy.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that when a dog is working, they use tons of energy mentally. Our trainer said something to the effect that one hour of serious training or working mentally exhausts a dog.
So, they either need to run it off or work it off.

[browndog]

Thanks Linda. That's good to know. I think we need to challenge her more with more intensive training. I am so impressed with how well Bogart has done with him being a high energy dog too! Gives me great hope!

[doodleheaven]

Hi Browndog,

Just reading your post. My 4 year old labradoodle, Bailey, also has/had excitement peeing which is exactly what your dog seems to have.

I watched an episode of 'Dog Whisperer' a long time ago. Ceasar said that a dog does his 'excitement pee' only when his excitement is at a level 10/10 which is usually when he first is greeting someone. If you can get his excitement down to an 8ish then he won't pee. The way to accomplish this is to ignore him when you first come home, just for the first minute or so until he calms down a tad. At that point he won't pee anymore. If you make this a rule in your house then it will slowly get better. We have done it for a few years now and rarely does Bailey have an 'excitement' pee. We have taught the kids not to be excited when first greeting Bailey too. When we come home, we open his kennel, don't say a word and take him directly to the yard to empty his bladder. By the time we've done that he has calmed down, his bladder is empty and we can all be happy to see each other. It really has worked for us and he doesn't have those excitement pees even when he greets other people anymore. Oh, and if we know someone is coming over we still automatically just let him out prior so that if he does want to pee his bladder is empty.