How To Stop A Dog From Peeing When Excited

If you are kind of fed up with how you can help to stop your dog from peeing when he is excited, this posting will share some valuable tips that you can make use of to address this issue.

To make your dog stop his submissive or excited peeing, it’s important to find out what are the trigger points, what gets your dog to urinate and how you can break up that pattern permanently. Using high value treats at the right time is going to change his whole mindset and stop that trigger.

Always keep in mind that you should always remain calm when you are facing the situation where your dog is showing signs of submissive urination.

The more frustrated you are, the more anxious your dog becomes and the more likely he is going to submissively urinate.

What you need to do is to find out those triggers that cause your dog to pee and work on eliminating or redirecting these stimuli.

Stop His Excitement = Stop His Peeing

When your dog does not get excited when facing his stimuli, he will not have any submissive peeing accident.

So your first task is to work on getting him to release his pent-up energy so that he will not be easily aroused by stimuli and gets excited. 

As the saying goes “A tired dog is a GOOD dog”. When your dog is in low energy mode, he will be in good control!

To do this, plan for some routine exercise to provide an outlet for your hyperactive dog to let off his pent-up energy.

The following exercise is what I have planned for my energetic dog. It always works to get him tired after the games. And when he is in a tired and calm state, there is less likelihood of him getting into any excitement peeing.

1. Get him to engage in some physical games such as chasing after bubbles, tug of war, Freebies or Flirt pole games. Typically, I plan for 2 sessions per day (one in the morning and another in the afternoon), with each session lasting for about 30 minutes.

2. In the evening, after the meal, I will get him to play some mental simulation games such as puzzle games or some KONG toys stuffed with peanut butter. My dog usually loves the KONG toys as he knows that there is a treat in it and this helps to make him use his brain power to think of ways to get the treat out from the toys.

Never underestimate the importance of mental simulation games to make your dog mentally tired. At times, just physical workout isn’t going to effectively drain off your dog’s pent-up energy!

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Defuse the Situation

When your dog is exposed to something that makes him excited and his heart beats get faster, so does the release of adrenaline. This might cause his body system to go “haywire” and losing his bladder control would be one of the common outcomes.

This submissive or excited peeing behavior could get even more frequent whenever the stimuli gets closer to him or when he is getting any positive reinforcement for behaving in an excited manner.

This is what typically happens to my dog when I “accidentally” reinforcement his excitement 

(You should NOT do it)

1. He sees me from the windows that I’m coming back from work, and he rushes to the door waiting for me eagerly.

2. The moment I opened the door, his excitement reached the peak (as he had not seen me for almost a day) and I quickly acknowledged his excitement by petting him.

He was all over the cloud with his tails wagging vigorously and his adrenaline was pumping in his system at full speed.

3. As he is only 5 months old, so his brain and bladder control isn’t fully on the same page yet and this leads to him peeing all over the place. He is not able to hold his bladder well whenever he gets excited as his bladder muscle is still developing.

4. On top of that, he is also getting that positive reinforcement and attention from me and this makes him think that jumping around, getting excited and peeing all over is the right behavior.

This is certainly NOT the right reaction that you should give to an overexcited dog and I learned it through a hard way (cleaning up all the messes!)

What YOU should do is to teach your dog the impulse control behavior so that he will be able to react appropriately whenever he sees any stimuli without being over excited.

This is what you should do:

1. When you walk into the house, IGNORE your dog when he jumps on you, showing his excitement, wanting for your attention.

2. Do your routine and wait for him to calm down. ONLY when he is in a calm state, you would then go over to him and give him some treat. 

This will help him to associate that only by remaining calm, he will get your attention. This will prevent him from being excited and starts peeing.

This is to break up that cycle of him getting excited whenever he sees you at the doorstep.

Redirect His Excitement

Figure out on ways to redirect his excitement to some less exciting behavior. In this example, I will touch on how you can redirect his excitement on seeing you to follow your command to remain seated.

This can be done using the following approach:

1. Get ready with some high value treats in your hand before you open the door when coming back home. 

The treats had to be something that your dog would not usually get from you. Avoid using those normal kibbles as they are not enticing enough to divert your dog excitement to these treats. Go for some real meat type of treats. They are usually more enticing to dogs.

2. When your dog exhibits his excitement upon seeing you open the door, hold the high value treat in your hand and give him the “sit” command. 

3. Now he will have to make a decision as to obey your instruction (performing a sit) or continue with his excitement. In most cases your dog will prefer to get his enticing reward and do what you ask him to do (which is to sit down). 

4. When he remains seated, give him the treat and praise him using a marker clue – “Good Job!”. 

This will help him to associate “sit” command with rewarding experience and you have just made him stop his excitement (and stop his peeing as well) and get him to behave himself. 

Of course, you would need many rounds of practice to make your dog learn to choose your treat over his excitement.

Your State Of Calmness

Did you observe that your dog exhibits greater excitement when you greet him with a high energy excited tone? So keep your greeting low-key.

You see, dogs are extremely good at observing your state of emotion and react accordingly. If you are showing him your excitement, he will naturally react by behaving even more hyperactive.

Watch out on your body language as well and avoid direct eye contact with your dog and do not lean over him or pet him directly on his head.

It’s important that you maintain that state of calmness and talk to him in a calm demeanor so that he will follow your state and not act in an excited manner and start peeing on you.

Give Him LOTS of Potty Break

Your dog will certainly not get into any peeing accidents when his bladder is empty. So one of the approaches will be to ensure that your dog gets to go for his pee as often as possible and this will prevent him from any accidents even when he gets excited.

So how often should you make your dog go for his potty?

Dogs typically can hold an hour of his bladder for every one month of age. So if your dog is 5 months old, he can typically hold his bladder for up to 5 hours. (provided that he is potty trained). 

Of course that is the MAXIMUM duration that your dog could hold on to his bladder and that duration might differ when he gets aroused and excited.

So to be on the safe side, get your dog to do his elimination whenever you foresee that there will be distractions or triggers that are going to make him aroused.

Say, you are expecting some visitors coming to your home, and you know that your dog is going to get very excited. 

What you can do is to make him go for his potty before your guests arrive, and he will have an empty bladder that you do not have to worry about.

Never Punish Him For Submissive Peeing

Yelling or punishing your dog for his excited peeing is certainly something that you should NOT be doing.

In fact, punishing your dog is not going to help in his peeing issue as he is not going to know why he is being punished and this will make him confused.

You should instead focus on training him to redirect his excitement to avoid submissive peeing.

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Use Of Medication

At times, medication such as Proin could help to address your dog peeing problems if it is due to the causes of urinary incontinence.

What this medication does is to tighten the muscles that control urination. It’s often used on older dogs when they tend to have “leakage” problems.

So reach out to your veterinarian to get some advice if you suspect your dog is suffering from any urinary incontinence issue and see if Proin would be useful for him.