She Peed on my Bed

[harley03]

Was the dog left alone in the room?
Some dogs loose bladder control if they feel anxiety while left alone.

 

[3dognight]

We woke up to a wet (down) comforter Christmas morning. Cooper is not quite 2, but we had only had him a few months when he did this. So far it was his first and only time, maybe he was "excited" about Santa coming?? He is a very sound sleeper that is for sure. I am just writing it off as he had a little too much to drink before bed time.

He has also fallen off the couch a few times when napping....once again, sleeping like a log when it happens.

 

[Bethysue]

my other roommate had let her out of her crate then out to pee in the yard- and then i am sure wasn't paying attention when she peed on the third roommate's bed... and the time she peed on my bed i was in the next room... door open.. she could have been in there with me.. not sure about this last time at my friend's house....

 

[Krikkit]

It would be great if our Boxers could tell us exactly why they do things... :confused: With this type of thing though, if medical problems are ruled out, we just have to work around the problem.

You might find this Q & A of interest, from Jean Donaldsons 'Dogs are from Neptune website: http://www.lasardogs.com (seems to be offline..)

Question

Hi Jean!

A man called me for advice about a 10 month-old NM English Bulldog. He (the dog <G> ) is well housebroken. Recently, while the guy was at work, the dog got out of his crate, got up on the only two forbidden surfaces in the house, the bed and the sofa, and peed and pooped on each. He has repeated the behavior several times since, while the man was home and nearby but not watching closely.

Of course he told me the dog resents being left alone and is eliminating out of revenge, etc... I know this isn't true, but why do dogs sometimes go on beds or bed-like surfaces? I know they prefer absorbent surfaces, but the carpet is absorbent. Why a place where the dog really wants to be? The guy says the dog always wants to get up on these places when they are together, and they are the only places that are off-limits. BTW, the dog is pleasant in other respects, not pushy, gentle and amusing.
What do you think?

Reply:

Dog trainers hate it when this happens. We painstakingly attempt to indoctrinate our clients about behavioral principles, some basic canid ethology and steer them away from the spite-revenge-plotting-military-coup motives they so often ascribe to their dogs. Then the thing pees on the sofa. Makes you want to become a pastry chef.

For the record, I really don't think dogs view the products of their elimination as despised trump cards in revenge operas. Even if dogs were capable of a representation of another being's future punishment by an action they engage in now, they think urine and feces are quite fascinating.

There are a few things to rule out before entertaining the revenge theory. One is that some dogs, aside from having natural preferences for absorbent urination substrates, have other idiosynchracies about elimination. For instance, given a choice, many like to defecate into bushes or long grass, are more inclined to both urinate and defecate along fence or other boundary lines, get the urge to urinate in streams or shallow water, and like being on slopes or "high ground" for one or both functions. One possible explanation or partial explanation for the bulldog is that he is a high-ground enthusiast. If he's full and encounters a nice high, porous, possibly earthy-smelling area (how many dog trainers hear tales of dogs leaping on beds post-human-sex and peeing...), he is stimulated to eliminate. It worked the first time so a habit was born.

If these areas had been forbidden, it would delay the owner finding out about his dog's penchant as well as setting the stage for the ubiquitous revenge speculation. And, yes, it's possible that he really wanted to be there when the owner was there for one set of reasons (near owner, comfort etc.) and, when he finally did get there got the urge to eliminate.

A longer shot but worth knocking around is the idea that the dog was excited to be cruising around out of his crate at a time of day he normally wasn't exercising and doubly excited to be able to leap up onto novel areas that had previously proven dangerous. The excitement loosened him up and this, possibly combined with the high surfaces and novelty made him likely to let fly. It was reinforcing enough to be worth repeating, obviously.

There's also an extremely outside case for separation anxiety as a trigger for the initial incident. Not to mention the fact that the dog may have received punishments for going on the carpet in initial training and thus bed and sofa were the places he had not yet tested as indoor bathrooms. Perhaps it was a powerful experience to discover that they were safe and reinforcing.

In the more likely division are a couple of other notions: that the dog was not "well housebroken" to start with (by definition we can run with this) and the reliability of the reported facts. Never underestimate the (unconscious) ability of people to arrange the facts in a way that suits their current needs or the needs of the story they are telling. We all do this at times.

This guy may need, for a bunch or reasons (the frontrunners here are usually "see what I have to put up with?" and "NOW can I rub his nose in it?") to have a "housebroken" dog "suddenly" break training and go in the "only two" forbidden places in the universe exactly as a response to resentment. It's a case of having a pet theory first and squeezing the facts into it rather than using facts to build a theory.

For instance, what is this dog's real accident history?

How was he originally housetrained?

Did the owner empty the dog that morning before leaving him alone?

How earthy-smelling were the bed and sofa?

How is it the dog has managed to repeat the same mistake "several times since" the owner has had the wake-up call that his dog is not trained?

I would think a Bulldog eliminating on my furniture would make me supervise pretty closely, crate when my back was turned and re-institute a reinforcement-for-outdoor-elimination regime.

I'd be interested to hear more about peoples' dog's elimination preference oddities. We could post "Bizarre Eliminator of the Week" or something <g>.

Thanks for raising the issue.

 

[Bethysue]

hmmm...very interesting..

i especially loved this section:

"For the record, I really don't think dogs view the products of their elimination as despised trump cards in revenge operas. Even if dogs were capable of a representation of another being's future punishment by an action they engage in now, they think urine and feces are quite fascinating."

i agree... but now what? almost every time that she has done it, i am almost positive that nobody was paying attention to her properly.. 2 of the times my 3rd roommate (who is NOT a dog person) was the one home with her. and the last time, she was staying at someone else's house, so maybe he was preoccupied with something else (although he says he had just taken her out shortly before that.)

the time she did it to me she was only 4 months old. this is the first time she was caught in the act, so maybe the scolding she recieved will help along with the positive reinforcement that she gets everytime she goes outside...

does anyone have a sucess story for this issue???:confused: