Ep 137 Help! My Dog Pees When They're Excited

Does your dog turn into a water fountain every time they greet another dog or person? This week, we’re exploring why some dogs urinate when they get too excited and how this embarrassing, awkward (and sometimes hilarious) behaviour can actually open the door to growing super valuable skills for our dogs. Whether they seem to love people just a bit too much or can’t control themselves every time they see another dog, we’ll explore why this behaviour isn’t just the result of poor toilet training and what their brain might actually be telling them under the surface. We’ll discuss a few of our top tips and tricks to help your dog make better choices, plus why your dog’s pee might actually be the secret to all-round behaviour progress!  

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Whether your dog is unpredictable with other dogs or predictably bad…

Whether it looks like freezing, barking, lunging or running away…

Whether you are just starting out on your dog-owning journey or your dog has been labelled as having a “behaviour problem”…

… this episode is for you and is going to give you huge insights!

Want to join the Help! My Dog Online HUB? Here's the link: www.helpmydog.com/hub

Dr Tom Mitchell is a world-renowned veterinarian, behaviourist and dog trainer and director of the Behavet behaviour clinic (rated Excellent on Trustpilot), which sees over 400 pet behaviour consultations each and every month no matter where you are in the world. In 2023, he founded Help! My Dog, an online dog behaviour learning platform to help even more owners all over the world and show that dog behaviour transformation is not only possible but it's FUN, with the right know-how!

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Useful Links:
Follow Help! My Dog on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helpmydogofficial/
Schedule a Consultation with Behavet: https://www.beha.vet/
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Transcript

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He will usually lay on his back and pee with excitement. Oh no, it's like a fountain, and he has and he has peed over people. He even sprayed one lad in the face. Wow. Before we dive in, a warning. The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners. This is real life, and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic. So listen on at your own peril. As a veterinarian, dog behaviourist, best-selling author and trainer, over the past decade I've had an obsession with transforming the behaviour of dogs. Understanding their brains and creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home. I know all too well when the dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality. In fact, out of the blue, a few months ago, my little dog Gorse was bitten by a dog 20 times her size. And suddenly our life of stress-free walks, a calm and cuddly household and being teammates was replaced with reactivity, anxiety, and worrying about what's around the next corner. I'm Dr. Tom. This is the Help My Dog Podcast, and this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you and having a few laughs along the way. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog Podcast. And one of you lovely listeners has emailed in and has said, Hi Dr. Tom, we have a rather embarrassing struggle. I'm not sure if this should be a listener question or a cringe story. Our 18-month-old Jack Russell Terrier absolutely adores people and gets super excited. He will usually lay on his back and pee with excitement. Oh no, it's like a fountain and he has and he has peed over people. He even sprayed one lad in the face. Wow, that is the faceful of Jack Russell. We, yeah. Um, he does the same with visitors to the house. We try to get him outside so he doesn't pee on the floor, but we're not always fast enough. Even if um we put him in another room when visitors arrive, he'll still pee when he's let back in. Please help. Okay. Right, so there's a few things we can think about here. So, first of all, why is he doing this? Well, he's doing this because he's effectively becoming overexcited. His arousal levels are going way, way, way too high. Um, and the thing is, when I was gonna say when you're really excited, but you get what I mean? When you're really excited, sometimes you can lose bladder control. Um, and so um effectively he's just got kind of a very like arousal-sensitive bladder, which some individuals have, um, and um, and the excitement that he experiences when someone visits or when he interacts with someone um is um is causing him to urinate. Now, I say excitement, I'm assuming this is positive arousal, but equally the same can happen when it's negative arousal. In other words, when dogs are really, really worried about that interaction, arousal level goes up, bladder empties, right? So we've got that to think about. Now, um a few tips that I've got for you. First tip that I've got for you is I love the putting him in putting him in another room while they arrive. Because even though that he's still he's still urinating when he's let back in to interact with them, that will be effectively a lower arousal level than the chaos of people arriving and him getting excited. And it, you know, even if it just reduces his arousal level by five percent, it's worth doing right while we work on this. Now, second thing that we then need to um that we then need to think about is effectively what is happening is he is unable to if we think about it, right? There's two ways to fix this, right? We could say, okay, we're going to reduce your arousal level when interacting with people, and we're going to make your bladder less arousal sensitive. Option number one. Yeah. Option number two, though, is we could say, we're going to we're going to teach him to disengage from people um visiting the house or approaching so that the interaction does not happen and he is able to disengage. Okay. Probably option number two is going to be a little bit easier than option number one. And the cool thing is, is we could do a bit of option number two and a bit of option number one until we until we get this resolved, right? So, hey guys, I just want to take a moment to answer a question that has been coming in in literally 10 emails a day. And that is, how can we help you with your dog's behavior struggle? Whether that be reactivity, separation, anxiety, resource guarding, maybe you've got a multi-dog household struggle right now. Maybe your dog's just so over aroused on a walk that they just can't listen to you and they're chasing everything in sight. Like, can I get Tom's help? Um, and the answer is that actually you can, and you can do that by booking a behavet behavior consultation. That's where literally my team give you the plan on how to transform your struggle and get you to that dream that made you get a dog in the first place, right? Your world's got smaller and smaller and smaller. And actually, it doesn't need to be that way. You just need to reach out for help. Now, a couple of things to say on that. First of all, if you're insured, if your dog's insured with Pet Plan, Kennel Club, Agria, or many pets, we actually do direct claims with them, which means that that's covered by your insurance. So you don't pay out of your pocket, your insurance covers that. And the second thing to say is that we have loads of options if you're insured with another provider, or if your dog's not insured at all, that's also totally fine. We have loads of options that we've developed to make this so accessible for you. And because we're aware that you've already invested a load of time and a load of money in getting your dog, looking after your dog, caring for your dog. But the last thing we want is for you to have done all that and still not be living the life that you deserve with your dog. And we know we can get you there. So all you need to do is go to the Behave Vet website. And the way to do that is go B-E-H-A.V-E-T. That's behot vet and it will take you there. Or just Google Behave Vet, right? Um, and you can get scheduled in and we can literally get you booked in for a consultation as soon as possible. We normally can accommodate it within a week, right? So that you can be getting to your dream ASAP. What would what would I do from the point of view of option number one? Building disengagement from visitors. Well, I would teach him a disengagement game. And the disengagement game goes like this. You're gonna teach him a pattern of following food, okay? So you're gonna throw one piece of high value food forward, he's going to eat the piece of high value food. He's gonna go, that was really tasty, and he's gonna turn back to you. And what you're then gonna do is walk in the opposite direction to which you threw the piece of food and feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed to mouth, right? So there's one piece of food in one direction, there's loads of pieces of food in another direction. And you're gonna keep teaching him this pattern until he really, really gets it. To the point where he eats the piece of food that you throw out, but he's like desperate to get away from it so that he can go and get all the pieces of food that he gets for following you. Step one. Step two, on a walk and at a distance, you're gonna start to play this pattern in the direction of people that you see on a walk. Okay? So there might be a person 20 meters away on the other side of the field, one piece of food in their direction, yeah? You're still 19 meters away from them at this point, right? So the you know, the the the P risk is low, let's say. He's gonna eat the piece of food, he's gonna orient back to you, you're gonna walk away, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. You're gonna do that loads of times. You're gonna do that a bit closer, you're gonna do that even closer, right? Till you've got him bouncing away from the direction of people and suctioning away towards you, right? Then what you can start to do is you can start to do this when you bring him out of the room that you've separated him in when visitors are in the house. You pop him on lead to take him out of the room, harness and lead. You go, effectively, he knows where the visitors are in the house, right? And so you could just throw a piece of food in the direction of where the visitor, the room of where the visitors are sat having their you know, cup of tea, and then again, feed, feed, feed away from that direction. So we're teaching him disengage from the visitors. He knows where they are. You're gonna do that until you can get him into the space with the visitors, right? Where you could throw a piece of food towards where the visitor is and he orients away and you feed, feed, feed. If he fails that and he's like, I just still need to go and interact with them, you're gonna take it back. And you might be working in the hallway outside the room where the visitors are. You will get there, right? Um, this will get better and he will learn to disengage. At the same time, what you can play around with is you can play around with actually one you're already playing around with it, this will start to lower his arousal level in response to seeing people and seeing visitors, because if you're able to disengage from something, or you are disengaging from something, you're less excited about it, right? Christmas is coming, it's not coming, right? But let's, well, it is coming, but not that close. But unless you know, I'm just thinking of a similar example. We're all excited about Christmas. But if actually you go, you know what, I'm not thinking about Christmas, yeah, because I've got work to do, I've got a podcast to listen to. Guess what? You feel less excited because you're disengaging from it. Same with him. His arousal level will reduce. Another thing that we can do though is we can start to grow his ability to um his dimmer switch ability. In other words, at the moment, probably what he's got is a little bit of a light switch in terms of arousal regulation. He's either off or he's 100% on. Very Jack Russell, right? They often need to learn a dimmer switch. And so he goes from zero to 100 when he sees a person or sees a visitor coming to the house, and level 100 equals urination, right? And so instead, what you can play around with is actually dimmer switch games that bring him up in arousal and down in arousal. A little bit up and a little bit down, a little bit up and a little bit down, and more up and then more down, right? So that he gets not just level zero and level 100, but he also gets level 20 and level 30 and level 40 and level 50. And the best thing about level 20, 30, 40, and 50 is that they don't equal urination. So then he has more options when it comes to interacting with visitors because he doesn't immediately go to level 100. Now, there are tons of dimmer switch games that you can play around with. What I would suggest is if you're not already, become a member of the Help My Dog Hub, right? Super cheap. You don't have we don't, you're not locked in, you can be a member to fix this problem and then you can leave. But the thing is, there are loads of other things that we can work on in there as well. So most people don't. Um, but there is a course in there on how to build a dimmer switch. It's about 20 different games and strategies. There are 20 for variety and for progression, and because some will work better than others for your dog, and they will teach him that dimmer switch, right? And once he knows that dimmer switch, he's not gonna go from zero to 100, and therefore he's not going to go from zero to P in like 0.3 seconds, right? And so that is how I would tackle this. It is a problem that can resolve. I get it's super embarrassing, it's super awkward, especially that he's urinating in people's faces, far from ideal, right? But by implementing those steps, you will move forward and you will start to see wins, and those wins will give you momentum and that will get you to transformation. So hopefully you found that useful. That was this episode of the Help My Dog podcast, and we will see you next time.