Why Your Dog Pees When Its Excited And What You Can Do To Prevent It

If your pup is an excited piddler, you’re familiar with the tinkles, dribbles and puddles of urine that appear whenever your puppy gets really excited.  Excited peeing is usually more of a nuisance or inconvenience rather than a true problem.

Excitement urination happens when your dog squirts or dribbles small amounts of urine when they are very excited because they lose control of their bladder.  It usually happens to young dogs and most of them will outgrow it by the time they are one year old

Excited peeing is not a ‘bad behavior’ problem.  Your puppy is not misbehaving.  To deal with it, patience is the key.  It will take time to help your pup through it until they are more mature and have more control.  Punishing a puppy for excited peeing will not stop the problem and can trigger new problems such as submission or fear peeing.

By recognizing when your pup excitedly urinates, you can help to control the behavior.  Take notice of when and where the peeing is happening.  For instance, is it happening at the front door when you get home from work?  When you have company?  When your pup sees a friend out on a walk?

Once identified, make a plan to avoid it from happening by identifying when the puppy gets overly stimulated and loses control of their bladder. Implement a training session to help condition the puppy to be calm.  Teach them more control through avoidance of the stimuli or intervening and calming the behavior before it starts.  Socializing your puppy will also help prevent excited peeing because it will help condition the puppy not to get so overly excited by stimuli in the first place.

To further help your pup overcome excited peeing try these tips:

• When you get home, stay calm and avoid greeting your puppy.
• Don’t talk to or touch your puppy until they are calm and relaxed.
• Don’t escalate your pup’s excitement, rather teach your pup calming behaviors such as sit, down, and stay.
• Be prepared to reward calm behavior with treats.
• Take your pup out to eliminate before playtime, car rides, and walks.
• Reward your puppy for peeing in appropriate places.
• Calmly clean the mess with enzymatic cleaner.
• Plan ahead to sop up the mess in public places.
• Continue housetraining your puppy as you normally would.

Avoid triggering negative behaviors by correcting or punishing the puppy:

• Avoid being emotional or overexcited when greeting your puppy.
• Don’t get angry, yell at, or punish the puppy for excited peeing.
• Don’t overreact.

If your puppy never had the problem and then suddenly does, they need to go to the vet to rule out a urinary tract infection or other health problem.  To spare your puppy some distress, ask your vet how to catch the urine to take it to the vet with you.

If your adult dog routinely urinates when they are excited or suddenly starts urinating, they may have a health problem and should also be examined by a vet.  Some problems that can cause loss of bladder control include:

• Urinary tract infection.
• Bladder inflammation or stones.
• Weak bladder
• Spinal injury or degeneration
• Hormone imbalances
• Medications
• Diabetes
• Kidney disease

For healthy adult dogs that occasionally pee when they are overly stimulated, try the tips used for puppies.  Be sure that they’ve been taken out to empty their bladder before playtimes, etc. whenever possible. 

We hope these tips help you and your little piddler get through this growth stage.  Please feel free to share with your family and friends.