Excitable and submissive peeing...

[Wtfmummy]

We have a German short haired pointer who has just turned 1. She is obviously still a pup and totally bonkers but gets herself sooooooooo excited when we have guests that even if they so much as look at her she pees. Total carnage if they pet her on the head....

plus she also pees when being submissive or if she is told off - she has started counter surfing (kitchen table and work tips for food and paper - anything she can get hold of) and if I catch her I tell her off and she piddles....

Anyone got any experience of this?

Exactly the same but no solution as yet so I'm watching with interest...

Oh I feel your pain.

The only solution so far is to teach our dog to go to the toilet on command, so as soon as we come home we make him go to the toilet appropriately do his bladder is empty when we eventually greet him.

Apparently thunderjackets can help submissive dogs. I have plans to buy one, I'll let you know if it's any good...

Ignore, ignore and ignore if she does wee. Make all meet and greets outside (for obvious reasons!) Have calm meets where visitors ignore her until she is sitting still and calm. No big fuss build up to gentle chest, strokes, avoid head strokes.

Work on building up her general confidence with clicker training, which is excellent for nervous worrying dogs as they only get rewards. Teach any simple trick which whilst building her confidence will also calm her down and reduce adrenalin and teach her to be in a calm state and the knock on effect will be less weeing.

I guess you have had her checked out by the vet just in case?

Thanks all. I hadn't heard of Thunderjackets Fettuccine but just googled it and it's an interesting concept! Let me know if it works for your dog.

We do try and get guests to totally ignore her Cheerful but some of them really find this incredibly hard and end up surreptitiously stroking her and she pees. It's really difficult because she stays at the same level of excitement throughout the duration of a guest being here - even if they have been here for hours and managed to ignore her, should they pat her head or make eye contact at the end then all the good work goes out of the window... I'm hoping she'll start to calm down soon.

She is pretty awesome at recall, sit and stay to pips on a whistle when we are out but if you ask her to sit in the house she can't do it because she is too excited and then of course pees....

We took her to the vets and they are happy there is no physical reason for this, they just said it was pretty normal in pups for up to 18 months or so, more common in girls and not to get her neutered until her first season as premature neutering could cause longer term incontinence.

Really frustrating. And it's hard not to show your frustrations when it happens as I know that will only make the submissive weeing worse.

We've tried putting her in her crate when guests are over or closing the stair gate and confining her to the kitchen but the she just cries. Plus she can launch herself over the stair gate with ease which she did recently when a health visitor came round who unfortunately didn't like dogs...bloody chaos!

I had a friend with a dog that did that. She never used to be that bad, a quick fuss was fine but if you carried on fussing her for too long she'd piddle. I didn't go round to my friends for about a year and then when I did, I stroked the dog on the head briefly and she did a big puddle on the kitchen floor so she'd got worse! My friend said they couldn't really pet her much unless they were outside as she just pee'd every time they did!

Thanks Cunny - it is so sad really, we didn't get her so that we would ignore her, not make eye contact and not pet her.... I really hope it's something she grows out of....

Everything I've read has said its pretty common with dogs that have been rehomed due to abuse but we've had her since she was a baby...