Submissive urination in dogs is a complex problem that requires a little sensitivity and a lot of self-awareness.
First, we need to clarify the difference between submissive urination, where the dog feels intimidated, and excited urination, where the dog is aroused and loses bladder control.
Any dog can suffer from both types, and the solution for each type is the same.
Submissive urination in dogs is fairly straightforward. When a timid dog is approached by a human or even another dog, it may grovel on its belly as the person or dog comes closer. That first sign of dropping low to the ground is an indicator that the dog is uncomfortable or unsure of the approaching individual’s intentions. If the approaching individual doesn’t recognize or respond accordingly to that signal, a lot of times, the submissive dog will urinate to express their increasing fear.
Submissive dogs tend to engage in this behavior every time they are faced with any sort of challenge, regardless of how innocuous. Although it is usually triggered by people, it can be triggered by foreign places, objects or anything the dog encounters that makes it uncomfortable.
Dogs who pee when they get excited are of two camps; they are generally young and have not developed the muscle endurance to control their bladder in times of arousal, or they are dogs of any age who have been allowed to engage in behavior that leads to over-stimulation, and their lack of self control is espressed by urinating.
This form of spontaneous urination in dogs is when a human, often the owner, greets the dog enthusiastically, creating a lot of arousal, where the dog just spirals out of control physically. After the dog starts displaying its excitement, the owner starts scolding the dog, even physically punishing the dog, and the dog urinates out of confusion and frustration. That condition is actually far more common than any of the others.
The submissive urinator and the excited urinator are two sides of the same coin. One does it out of fear, the other does it out of an abundance of overstimulation. When humans direct attention to the dog, they are creating a predictor to a specific event. If the dog perceives the approach as threatening, they will throw signals that indicate their concern. If the dog anticipates excitement, he struggles to control himself emotionally because the presence of the person has become a harbinger of pleasure.
The easiest solution is to teach the dog how to control its own emotional state. The second easiest solution is to stop reinforcing the behavior with inappropriate advances towards the dog.
There are so many different camps on how to approach a dog, and quite frankly, they all seem to exclude the dog’s sovereignty throughout the process. Most dogs don’t like to be touched, especially by strangers. It is something we enforce, not considering how the dog might feel about it.
Even dogs that like physical contact have rules, and here are humans, making sure they break every one of them, because “Dogs should accept [insert ignorant human behavior].”
Accept? No. Tolerate? Absolutely.
But still, that is a condition we need to prepare them for. It’s not something dogs seek from strangers on their own. For dogs that struggle with submissive or excited urination with people they are familiar with, the solution is the same. Stop what you are doing, and do the exact opposite.
I cannot count the number of times I tell people to ‘ignore the dog’ until it settles, and to stop lavishing all sorts of physical, exciting praise for every little thing. The “GoodBoyyy” dichotomy does more to create confusion than any other reinforcement cue we use on dogs.
We are always telling our dogs what ‘good’ dogs they are. It cheapens the value of it as a conditioned reinforcer, and it’s over-use creates confusion when what we really mean to do is nothing at all, or deliver a conditioned punisher to stop a behavior.
“Good dog” has become the panacea to everything that ails the dog-owning culture, and with it comes a litany of problems that could have been avoided if we just kept our mouths shut, and learned a little bit about conditioned reinforcers and the contrast we create when we say one thing and do another.
Our worldview is human concentric, naturally, but it doesn’t take much to understand the dog’s perception of events if we simply just took the time to consider that they may even have an opinion. They do. If we stopped to consider it, the number of dog bite incidents would decrease exponentially once we realized how our behavior influences theirs.
But, that’s all well and good. What do we do to change it?
Easy.
Control yourself. Teach your dog how to control itself. Control the encounters your dog may experience with people that are not familiar, by teaching the people (even casual encounters can be educated kindly and respectfully) how to interact positively with your dog in ways that are encouraging and mutually beneficial.
Strangers do not need to touch your dog. You don’t either.
I am fairly certain that you would object to anybody racing up to you squealing like an infant and grabbing for the top of your head to pat you like they were testing the ripeness of a melon.
It all relates.
When we were young, we knew which Auntie Cheek-Pincher to avoid, and which uncle smelled like old tobacco and whiskey.
If the presence of humans becomes the predictor to an unpleasant event, we inadvertently reinforce submissive urination as a tactic to relieve social pressure. Better to ignore the dog and instruct others to ignore the dog until it is calm and in cntrol of its emotions. No touching, or restrict touching as reinforcement on a substrate you don’t have to clean, like dirt or grass.
One of our strategies for submissive urinators is for any greetings to occur outdoors, on grass, gravel or dirt. The greeter is instructed to not try and make contact with, look at or talk to the dog. Reinforcement only comes when the dog loses interest in the greeter, and comes in the form of a quiet word or a brief touch under the chin, not at the top of the head.
Why?
Place your own hand in front of your own face and tell me what you see.
That’s intimidating to a dog.
I’m not having my greeter stoop down and ‘get small’, or chirp and make friendly overtures toweards the dog with an extended hand looming towards the dog’s face. It’s a great way to get bit with the worng candidate. Just stand there. Do nothing. Give the dog the latitude to decide how it wants to proceed.
If the dog shies away, or tries to escape, don’t move, don’t reinforce, don’t speak, just stand there until the dog settles down and then simply move away. The greeter doesn’t have to move either. One of the biggest mistakes I see handlers make is letting the greeter move away. Don’t. The dog learns more if you releive social pressure only after the dog is in a calmer state of mide. It acts as a reinforcer for more emotional self control.
See what I did there? I didn’t need to use food, and truly timid, fearful dogs will generally not accept food from someone in a stressfull environment, even their handler or another, familar person. No need for it. Just allow the dog to ‘escape’ pressure by moving it away from the encounter, after the dog calms down.
For excitable, but nervous dogs, the same rules apply. Think of what concerns the dog the most, don’t avoid it entirely, but introduce it slowly enough for the dog to be able to make informed choices.
In the video I have provided, there are ample opportunities for this super sociual, but nervous pup to overreact and ‘leak’ because he is so overstimulated. By waiting until he is calmer before advancing, and then waiting until his feet stop moving to reinforce more relaxed behavio, what he learns is what he wants, physical reinforcement, occurs when he stops struggling.
Win, win for the dog and for the floors.
The interim between crate extraction and actual greeting reveals that the dog had an opportunity to relieve himself successfully outdoors, before anything exciting started happening. By making sure the bladder is empty before we start potentially creating conflict where urination may occur, we can minimize the risk of ‘accidents’ in the home, or out in public.
Immature bladders and excitable, nervous dogs are always the mitigating factor regardless of how emotionally neutral we make ourselves, so it is important that we stage this in such a way that we optimize success every step of the way.
Submissive Urination is often resistent to change because humans frustrate fast, and if our dogs suspect insincerity in any way, they will cling to the behavior we are trying to eliinate simply bexause we are repeatedly presenting that visual image of anger and frustration.
It’s not a ‘fault’. It’s like beating a kid for wetting the bed. That just makes it worse.
If you have a dog who struggles with submissive or excited peeing, we are only an email away.
We have a lot of experience working with puppies of all shapes sizes and breeds. If you have an adult dog with similar problems with a lack of confidence, our private training or online training are world-class options for common sense training that yields the results you are looking for.
