8 month old spanador wee's with excitement! advice please

[K&Max]

Hi I have a lovely 8 month old spanador (lab/spaniel cross) he's great, crate trained, comes on recall and great with the kids. I also have a 18 month old blue merle collie, they get along ok sometimes I have had to break up the rough and tumble but not often. My new pup has been neutered and my collie has been too. My problem is when you try and play with him, pet him he wee's...so in the evening we have to ignore him and tell him nicely to sleep on his bed. He gets lots of exercise and attention but can't control his weeing with excitement. I feel very bad that I can't fuss him lots in the house and not can the kids as they will be weed on and so will the floor/carpet. Any tips or advice from anyone who has had a dog with a similar problem?

 

[eingana]

Oh dear, that sounds like an awful lot of cleaning up around the children.

I know lots of dogs that wee either in excitement or fear, or have done so at some point in their life. This is usually addressed by bringing in a very careful period of calm during the times when the dog would normally be worked up enough to wee.

Have you tried bringing in 'chill' periods? These are not normally used at the time when the dog is actually likely to wee, but at an earlier time to prevent them getting worked up to that extent and thereby prevent the weeing. Think of it like a toddler getting all overwrought for something; judicious use of time outs to calm down can make the whole tone of the day better.

When you say that he wees when he's being fussed, is that ALL times he's fussed or just when he's excited at the attention? Most pups will learn very quickly that they won't get any attention when they're excited and many of them will put themselves in time out on command when they start to get over the top emotionally once they've got it in their routine.

The good thing with this is that weeing with excitement or stress is usually resolved naturally as they get older and they learn how to cope with delayed gratification. You can help this along by teaching him 'wait' and 'leave' commands and gradually increasing the time he can wait from a few seconds up to a few minutes. Delayed gratification is a hard thing for puppies to learn, but he's at the age now when he can start to get a grip on the concept, and understanding that you can't have everything immediately helps with keeping your excitement under control too.

Please give your lovely dog a very gentle and calm stroke off me