Submissive urination problem

[lovemyhoney]

Hi, I am a new grt. pyr owner and am loving my sweet girl! She is only 5 months old but has been doing great with potty training and does not have many accidents in the house. However, lately anytime she is scolded or even just told "no" in a firm voice, she suddenly begins to urinate. I have researched this and found that she is doing something called submissive urination. This behavior has just started and she does it any time we correct her, not just for potty issues. If she jumps up on our children, on the furniture, begins to chew on shoes, whatever. It's almost as if just firmly yelling "no", in the same tone as I would my child, scares the "pee" out of her. And as soon as that begins, I try to grab her to get her outside, only to have a trail of pee through the house as she takes off running afraid. It is becoming somewhat frustrating and I am not sure what to do to correct this. I don't want her to be frightened of us, but I do have to correct her. The way it is getting, I am afraid to yell no or stop because I will then have a mess to clean up. Is this common or has anyone else had this problem with their grt pyr? Any suggestions, ideas, or advice is welcome asap Thanks

[Tsunibear]

My Mom's dog use to do that and we were told to just ignore her because, they grow out of it or at least she did. You can still correct her with a firm No but, don't pick her up to take her out cause that is just spreading it. It's easier to clean it up in one spot then another.

You can also try instead of yelling no maybe just spraying her with a water bottle when she is doing something wrong. It might help with the submissive peeing thing too.

[Davey Benson]

My last border collie did that. you just look at her cross eyed and she would quickly squat down and piddle a little... a spot usually between a quarter and a half dollar size. I had to read up about that behavior because I had never seen it before. Like you, the discription behind "submissive urination" fit it to a "T". It tends to lend itself to sensitive breed dogs, like border collies, and other weak nerved dogs.

One of the best methods to deal with it, I read online back then, was to ignore that behavior, niether scold for it, nor coddle the dog for it. If she/he learns that peeing on the floor won't give the dog any attention ether good or bad... it will soon stop.

I praticed it, just completly ignored the peeing, then when she wasn't looking, distracted with something else, somewhere else, I cleaned up the piddle spot. It was less than a month and the behavior was almost completly stopped.

It seems like any attention paid to that behavior either good or bad seems to re-inforce it.

I have to admit, that if you are in an environment with beautiful hardwood floors or prestine white carpets..... just ignoring piddle puddles on the floor for a while, will be extreamly hard to do.

[Jewel]

Hmmm, so it sounds like what's happening now is she gets told "no" when she's done something undesirable, and she does her submissive pee to appease, and instead of the pressure decreasing, she gets a even more stern "no" and then a grab for her collar which frightens her even more.

If this submissive pee is the result of your pup reacting to a stern "no", perhaps you want to consider using a different command. With a "soft" dog like your pup, you probably do not need much hard inflection when telling her you disapprove of something she does. Rather than "no", perhaps you can use "off" without using hard inflections when you say it. If she jumps on the couch, use your body to "squeeze" her off the couch by crowding her and telling her "off" at the same time. What you are essentially doing is physically claiming the couch. The claiming method should be less jarring to her so that she doesn't immediately go into the submissive pee. If she jumps on the kids, you can use the same body claiming method to get her off, and again you can use the "off" command. With chewing shoes, go to her and physically claim the shoe while offering her a toy for trade. The claiming of the shoes doesn't mean taking it away from her with your hand, rather, stand next to her and edge your foot next to the shoe, give her a disapproving sound, which doesn't need to be harsh. If she stands up to give up the shoe, praise her or give her something else to play with as reward.

The subsmissive pee is not very common with this breed, I don't think. But every dog is different. Corrections need not require a firm or harsh command as it's a matter of getting your meaning across. Use different words to get her to stop different things you don't want her to do. Another command you can use other than "off" is "not for puppies", "not yours", the type of less intense words to teach the pup. TexasKat taught her two a variety of commands like that to convey the message. Hopefully she can chime in.

[lovemyhoney]

Thank you everyone for the advice. I am going to try using different words and see if that helps - I did try the "squeezing" method when she jumped on the couch today but she just thought we were playing a game. I kept calmly saying off and moving her over, but once she realized I was not yelling, she thought it was a game and tried to play with me. She jumped from one couch right to the next one LOL. I found myself moving from couch to couch for about 10 mins. but at least no pee Even though she is a grt. pyr. mix (mixed with German Shepherd), I didn't think she would be as sensitive as she seems to be. Everything I had read about them said that they were stubborn, so I guess I am just surprised by this submissive thing. And yes, it is hard to ignore her potty mistakes on my lovely hardwood floor, but maybe the spritz bottle will work on that. I do notice that most of her submissive issues happen right when she is having an accident and I have tried to catch her by yelling Honey No - in a loud firm voice to stop her and get her outside. If I find an accident and go to see where she is hiding just walking toward her and asking her what did you do? in an unhappy voice seems to send her straight into a submissive behavior. I hate it because to an onlooker you would think that I have beat my poor puppy. So I am going to work on changing my tone and trying a spritz bottle. Hopefully these things will work and quickly If anyone else has ANY advice or ideas, I would love to hear them! So glad to have found this place for help!

[Lou Lou]

Honestly the whole uber submissive/shakin' in the boots thing sounds very Shepherd to me.

We took in a Shepherd stray when I had my Irish Wolfhounds. He lasted a couple months. He was so shy if you approached him too quickly he crouch and shake and sometimes when pushed he'd growl or snap as well. I wanted to do right by him but I couldn't handle it anymore.