Four times over the past three months or so, I’ve come home to find that one of my dogs has had an accident. Two I don’t blame them for (the dog walker canceled unexpectedly and I didn’t get the messages till I’d come home after being gone for about 13 hours). The other two they could have held. The most recent one was just today when I went out for a few hours only to find doggie pee waiting for me on the bathroom floor.
I’m thinking it’s the older dog since she is getting up in years and the pee looks like her pattern (she walks while she pees and the younger one just goes in one place). I think I need to get her checked out by the vet. Luckily, I have appointments for both of them to get some routine shots next week so I’ll have the vet look into the pee situation as well.
What I don’t understand is why they are choosing the bathrooms? There can’t be a smell that I haven’t removed. I have three bathrooms and today was the first time they’ve used the same one twice. Plus, each time they’ve peed on a throw rug. The rugs were cheap and needed replacing, so I just threw them away and mopped underneath them. (In fact, one of the reasons I was out today was to buy new throw rugs for the bathrooms!)
Do they think that since I go in there then they can to? Is there some human pee smell in the bathroom (I swear, I keep them pretty clean and it’s not as if I use the floor for crying out loud)?
I suppose if they’re going to pee in the house, the bathroom is easier to clean up than the living room carpet. But it’s so weird that they’re peeing in the bathrooms!
Did you train them with newspaper or puppy pads? My sister-in-law trained her dog exclusively with them, and now that the dog is an adult, if it has an accident inside the house it’s always on a throw rug or some other flat piece of something on the floor. She thinks it’s because they pick the thing closest to what was OK to go on when they were puppies. Makes sense to me!
I dunno, but if my cat is going to have an accident, 99% of the time it has always been on a bathroom throw rug. It makes sense in that case b/c a) her litter box is in the other bathroom and b) the throw rug more or less resembles a litterbox from a functional perspective (soft, rectangular, beige, scratchable). If you also have cats, maybe they started the problem and the dog is picking up on that scent?
My guess: they’re choosing the bathrooms for the reason you’d think they were. Probably, it’s the location in the house with the strongest smell of urine, or they’re used to seeing humans use the bathroom so they figure since they can’t get to theirs, then that’s the next best thing. Dogs are particularly sensitive to owners who get upset at puddles of pee. My dogs, the rare times they can’t hold it, will always go by the back door where I let them out. One will sit by the door and wait for me to let her out. Dogs are smart, and they don’t want to upset you, so I’d think they’re just picking the best possible place in the worst circumstances.
Even if you scrubbed and scrubbed, the dog can probably still smell traces of urine in the bathroom. Dogs’ noses are incredibly sensitive. It’s almost impossible to completely remove an odor to where they can’t detect it.
When you flush the toilet with the lid open tiny, microscopic droplets of whatever’s in the bowl get sprayed into the air. You can’t smell it or see it. Unless your house is brand-new and you’ve never used the bathroom (and none of the workmen who built the house used it) the dogs can smell urine in there.
The reason why they used the rugs is that dogs instinctively look for something absorbant on which to urinate, meaning that given the choice, they’ll use a rug before peeing on the bare linoleum.
They knew you did not want them to pee in the living room, so they chose the place which seemed the lesser of evils-- a place where the humans pee. Once one of them had went, the others probably figured that it must be okay.
I suggest you’ll want to keep that door shut, if you don’t want indoor accidents. Now that they’ve done it once, they might not wait for a true “emergency.” Once you break a rule, it gets easier and easier.
You could litter box train your dogs for emergencies like this. My friend uses a low box filled with shredded newspaper for her dogs.
Is your older dog a spayed female? Sometimes, as they age, they lose a little bit of bladder control. Your vet can give you a relatively cheap prescription medication which will take care of the problem.
The older dog is a spayed female. Thanks, I’ll ask the vet about that. I have no cats, but the older dog was originally paper trained (there was no need to with the younger one since my older dog actually taught him to pee outside).
I’ll try to keep the doors closed now. It does seem like whichever dog (strongly suggest the older one) is now using the bathrooms without a good excuse. It’s kind of difficult, they know how to open the bathroom doors! (The doors have handles rather than knobs and the dogs have learned how to open them–I’ll have to remember to put baby gates in front of them).
Could your bathrooms be the farthest location from where your dogs sleep and otherwise live? When I’m not home, and for some reason one of my dogs have really, really gotta’ go, 99% of the time they choose the basement; about as far from the rest of the house as you can get.
Do you have cushions/pillows or beds for your dogs around the house? If so, you might want to check them out.
My older spayed female started “dribbling” in her bed while she was sleeping (that’s how I discovered the problem). The new puppy must have smelled traces of urine, because I caught her peeing there last night.