My Dog Pees When Excited

If your dog pees when excited it can be very frustrating, and embarrassing too. Especially if the cause of their excitement is guests to your home or visiting family members. No one wants to be dancing around puddles every time they welcome someone indoors. But this issue is normally short lived, and there are things you can do to manage it. First off, it can help to understand why your dog pees when excited. So, let’s take a closer look at the cause of this behavior.

Why Dogs Pee When Excited

There are three main reasons that your dog might be randomly letting out little pees.

Bladder Control Problems
Submissive urination
Excitement

The first is an issue for your veterinarian, the second and third you can help to manage at home.

Bladder Control Problems

If your dog is peeing in the house in what appears to be an excitement induced way, but has never done is before and is an adult, then your first port of call should be to your veterinarian.

Spaying and old age are common causes of bladder weakness in dogs, and being in season is also often associated with poorer bladder control.

Your veterinarian is the best person to help with an older dog having accidents in the home. They can quickly start to work on resolving or managing any new medical issues.

Most of the dogs that pee during unusual or exciting situations at home are puppies.

Submissive urination

Puppies and some adult dogs can be nervous of new experiences.

They might be pleased to see a stranger as they are a friendly soul at heart, but they can also feel quite worried by the change.

Submissive urination is a dog reacting to feeling stressed. They are trying to appease the person or thing they find scary.

It will often be accompanied by cringing body language.

Pushing themselves onto the floor, looking out the corner of their eye or even appearing to smile. Known as a submissive grin.

Dogs are often “memeified” doing these things, as people find them funny. But they are actually signs of fear and that something is wrong.

How to Help Your Dog

The way to help resolve submissive urination is to slowly and gradually build up their confidence.

Make new experiences as positive as possible, give strangers tasty treats to drop for the dog when they arrive, while encouraging them not to make eye contact directly or to pay too much attention to the dog until they relax.

They can also be helped by some of the management techniques for dealing with a dog that pees when excited.

It is really common for puppies to lose control of their bladders when things get excited.

Often when greeting their family on arrival into the house, or even the room they are in.

This often becomes less frequent as they grow. But it’s still not unusual to find in the first couple of years of their lives on occasions.

Indeed I have had a dog that did this well into her first year. She was just so happy to greet certain visitors to the home!

How to Manage This

Once you realise that your dog pees when excited like this, the best way to manage it is to avoid the situations that are getting them worked up.

Usually this means you let your dog greet the person that they are peeing around once they have become boring and established.

Most dogs that pee when excited do so when physically greeted by someone.

So we need to manage this moment of meeting, by making it more calm and even dull.

There are two great techniques that work well, depending on how obliging your guest is!

Guest Participation

If the person arriving at your home is willing to follow instructions, this can work well.

Ask them not to interact, make eye contact with or approach your dog at all.

They are to come into the room, and either stand somewhere for a few minutes or take a seat and tuck their legs under the table.

Keep their hands raised above the dog’s height, and their attention focussed on you.

Ask them to pretend the dog isn’t there.

It seems mean but the dog won’t be harmed by being ignored for a few minutes.

When the initial excitement has worn off, they can give them a quick pat or a hello.

If this then causes the dog to wet themselves, next time a guest comes ask them to ignore the dog for longer.

What we are doing here is making guests seem boring, and therefore less exciting.

However, some guests are terrible at following instructions. In these situations you need to create a physical barrier.

Delayed Introductions

When your guest arrives, before you let them into the house put your dog somewhere secure.

Ideal places include a crate or puppy pen, but behind a baby gate in a safe room is okay too.

Just make sure it is clear that they are not a part of what is going on in the room that you are going to greet your guests.

Allow time for all the human family members to say hello and settle down with a coffee.

When the novelty has worn off in ten or fifteen minutes, you can let the dog into the room.

Ask your guests not to make a huge fuss and excitement when they say hello, and most dogs by this point will be calm enough to keep their bladder under control.

Having some pre-prepared distracting treats can help a lot too for the moment you let them into the room.

Stuffed Kongs or other toys that require them to work for their treat are great for holding their attention during the initial exciting moments.