Puppy peeing in excitement, any advice please?

[slightlycrumpled]

Hi our 12 week old puppy is just great and already reasonably reliable on the housetraining. Apart from when she greets people at the door when she pees all over their feet!

She did it to my mum today, which whilst DH found it hilarious wasn't great.

I've looked a bit on the Internet & in my puppy book but as usual advice seems to be conflicting and I'm confused. The first few times our instinct has taken over and we've just said 'crumpled dog! No!' and just taken her outside. I don't think that's the right thing though as she's still doing it!

Does anyone have any advice please? Thanks for reading. (hope it makes sense - I have gin!)

Watching with interest as our 18 month old Springer is still an occasional victim of what we fondly know as excitement incontinence!

Haha that's what DH calls it.

I've spent the last few weeks telling everyone how great she is only for her to wee all over their feet, and because she is wagging her tail & generally being bonkers it goes everywhere! I have three boys & have never seen wee spray so far !

Let her meet and greet on the doorstep, and tell visitors to watch where they put their feet!

Ideally I suppose you cut the meeting and greeting, get her to sit and wait and the visitor to completely ignore her, but that probably just postpones the puddle???

She is a baby. There's not a hope in hell that she will be able to control her bladder completely yet - don't forget she has only been alive for 3 months, her muscle control has a lot of developing still to do. She just can't physically control it, it's not that she isn't listening to you, or doing it deliberately. She would also almost certainly wee with fear if she found herself in that situation too.

If you know people are coming over, take her out for a pee 5 minutes before they're due which will reduce the likelihood of stress incontinence.

You will need to teach her to become less excited when people arrive though, so ideally they will completely ignore her until she is calm and once that has happened I would suggest they ask her to come to them for a fuss. It will take time though; she is having to learn to overcome her natural exuberance and that is such a valuable part of a dog, so avoid telling her off she just won't understand what you're on about.

Do not tell her off. This is very often a mixture of fear and excitment.

Try to make the meetings very nonconfrontional eg do not look at the puppy, do not let visitors stroke or move towards your puppy.

Does your dog focus on a toy? If you have a toy that is more exciting than a visitor this can be produced when visitors appear. The dog will be calmer (less likely to wee) and also have something to do which will also prevent the weeing.

Meet and greet people outside (so if she does wee it will not matter). Also a nervous dog will feel that they can move away from the situation if it is too overpowering.

Only let visitors acknowledge her if she is sitting and is still (very very very hard for a puppy but they do learn) so be prepared to ignore her bouncy behaviour. Even then watch your puppies body language, does she like to be touched stroked etc. She may prefer to be stroked under her chin rather than top of of head.

You may find if visitors drop treats it will give her something else to do and think about rather than the excitement of the greeting.

Usually if the weeing is ignored the quicker the dog will feel more confident on greetings and the sooner the behaviour will stop.

Thanks for the replies, I think that ignoring it is probably the best action. She is so very, very excited when anyone comes in, which will be easier to deal with when the children are back at school and there isn't a steady stream of excited kids at the door.

Thanks again.