Be Less Forceful
I have a Siberian Husky-American Eskimo mix. When I try to correct wrong behavior, she gets scared and leaks urine. Also, if I make a move toward her, she runs away dripping urine. How can I discipline her and avoid this problem?
- Kristine Borucki, Trumbull, Conn.
Discipline is exactly what she doesn't need. It sounds like a lot of components of super-submission or submissive urination. One of a dog's signals to a very superior being is to cringe, squat, urinate, sometimes roll over and urinate. This is super-submission going on, a supreme compliment, total prostration, subservience.
[When your dog urinates in front of you, you think], "What are you doing? This is in my facehow bad of you!" It escalates and sends a signal to the dog that it has to submit even more.
Be less forceful with the dog. Try to approach the dog in a less threatening way, even from a crouched position. Call the dog to you and make a fuss over it. Don't look directly in the dog's eyes. This dog needs non-threatening signals delivered to it, no discipline, a lot of love and support, techniques to increase its self-confidence.
Do a Personality Check
I have a Chinese Crested that is 9 months old. Lately, she has been urinating on my down comforter and now on the couch. Please help.
- Brenda Craft, Lakeland, Fla.
In both of these urination problems, check there isn't anything else going on. If a dog starts to urinate around the house for on reason or another, have a veterinarian check the urine or blood. Assuming everything is hunky dory, I would like to do a personality check to make sure [the problem is the dog's] dominant nature.
Chinese Cresteds were selected for various guarding and barking functions. I think they're a little uppity. Maybe the problem is marking. When a dog of either sex starts to urinate in unusual places like your pillow, down comforter, Candlewick bedspread, this indicates urine marking. It's much more common in dogs on the dominant side. One way through that is a dominant control so the dog can see more clearly there's no confusionit's not No. 1 in the pack. There's no need for it to signal its own dominance.
It's not sufficient to take the comforter through the wash. There will be, for the dog's amazing nose, traces of what was there. Do thorough cleanup with an odor neutralizer.
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