Four dogs - all have incontinence. Grrr.

Heya guys, could really use some advice as a last ditch effort to get everything under control. My family and I own 1 G. Pincer, 1 King charles, 1 westy terrier and 1 lab x collie mix. The pincer is female, rest are boys ALL are fixed (they were before they were rescued and all have a sad history before they came to us). Bare with me this might be a lot of information I just want to give you EVERY detail so you can HELP me figure out what the issue is. Four dogs, all came at different intervals. They are trained wonderfully apart from our eldest. They are obedient and polite. They listen to mommy and behave outdoors. They get fed late afternoon a weighed meal of Iams. EVERY morning we come down, there are at least 5-10 wee's ALL over the house downstairs. Some have obviously let their bladders loose others its a just a small "this is my territory" pee. We have had experts come in, costing us LOTS OF MONEY, bought crates, even a cctv to work this out. We walk them morning, afternoon and just before we go bed, equating to about 3-4hours worth of exercise and play. There are four family members, each dog has kinda attuned themselves to a person so one on one attention isn't lacking, in fact we've been making additional effort to see if jealousy was an issue. SOMEONE is always at home, the balcony and garden door is open apart from when we are in bed. EVEN STILL, I just went to the loo and when I came back there was HUGE PISS next to the bin by the OPEN garden door - this is what led me to a rage on here. We will never get rid of them, and we have always owned between 3-7 dogs at any one time. But this pack is a F********!!!!! nightmare. When there is one pee you can always tell because ALL of the dogs are sheepish and slink away asap. We cant ever tell any one dog off, because it could be all four and by the time we go over the cctv it's too late. (Let me make you aware that we have footage of ALL the dogs taking liberty downstairs.) All the dogs can wee on command, and we rarely find a number two in the house, just piss. Piss piss piss. The same piss that has ruined our wood flooring it will cost us thousands to replace it all and we HAVE replaced it once (to eliminate the pee odour to help with training). This has been ongoing for a year now these four have been with us between 3-5years. It's really getting on our nerves we cant have visitors and every morning we have to tiptoe and clean up several pisses before we can get on with our lives. We've had various dog trainers visit us, we've tried so many methods now and have behaviour specialists study the household community. Feedback is as follows: its a dominance competition, they think downstairs is a toilet out of habit now. We have always trained out dogs before now, even to enter small competitions locally. We haven't moved house, had any new animals introduced into the house OR had any major work done previous to the year this started happening. HELP PLEASE. My poor mother and grandmother (the latter had an accident coz her walking sticks slipped in a puddle of PISS) are at their wits end. I will have to move out if we are to keep the dogs. This cant continue.

Hi, sorry for the problem, a rather depressing one to have to keep clearing up all the time!

Ok, a few thoughts if that's OK

The above stood out for me - leaving doors open all day can mean that dogs don't realise the difference between in and out. It can cause housetraining issues.

Second, do the dogs toilet in front of you when off lead? Only some dogs will be unhappy going in front of the owner,or, if they've been told off (dogs can even sense our heartbeats or a quick intake of breath, so sensitivie dogs may take that, even as being told off!). Ih this case, dogs will hold their wee and then only let go when the owner is not there!

Have all the dogs been vet checked? Obviously all will not have any medical problems, but if one does have, it can affect all the others. Did the people you got in, ask you to get the vet to check the dogs before they gave advice?

Do you know about cleaning up correctly, so as to avoid odours of urine which can be in disinfectants, etc? as this can make a big difference

How long has it been happening, do you know?

Wys
x

Hey thanks for the fast response. I am really eager to get some varied opinions right now. No they are all happy to pee in front of me, in fact the female pincer will go for a crap halfway crossing the road. We have managed through positive reinforcement while outdoors to get ALL of them to wee on command. "Go for a widdles!!" lol, even our very smart 10 year old psycho rescue terrier has learnt. We have studied allllllll about canine hygiene, my recently passed grandad was a vet and a loyal customer of trigene products. There have always been a few accidents in the past but I'd say it's been a year with this current level of incontinence. We have all had them vet checked and yup, its not medical. The door open theory is an interesting one, but we leave it open always not just for the dogs, it's just a family habit since I was a kid. I threw that idea at my mother who believes, and I quote, "that OF COURSE they know the difference between the garden and the house, what utter nonsense." Yeah, shes hard to work with on this. We take turns kicking them out at night, about every two hours, more than a new mother has to -.- just so our house can stay at least a little bit cleaner. If we lock them upstairs, they piss upstairs in our bedrooms. It just doesn't matter, doors open, doors closed we still have to get up in the night ><

This isn`t a dominance thing, it`s habit. If a dog gets used to peeing in a certain spot, they`ll go back to it. If another dog has peed there, they`ll add their own marker.
So I suggest you deep clean the spots they`re marking in, including the walls and finish with diluted Jeyes fluid or Dettol to kill the residual smell, then during the day shut them in a room with someone there to keep an eye on them. Use baby gates if you like, but they need to be observed all the time. At intervals take them outside. Reward if they oblige.
At night I`d pen them in a small, easily cleaned area. If no marking has occured, fine. If it has, clean up as above. Block that spot off to stop it becoming a pee place.
And so on.
It`ll take time to break the habit, but at least your house will smell better.

how difficult for you!!
On the CCTV is there any patterns?? Like a certain time? are the dogs distressed before they do it? any strange noise??

It could ba as simple as always having the door open means they never have to hold it or to ask you to got, they are never really toilet trained

I suppose the only things I can think of is to close the doors during the day and get used to taking the dogs out at certain times
Get up at night and take them out before they have a chance to go

Does this only happen when they are left on their own in a different part of the house? or when you go out?? might be a form of seperation anxiaty??

I agree it's not a dominance thing but a habit.

I'm a feline behaviourist & whilst feline behaviours & motivations are very different from dogs, there are some similarities.

Both species use urine to scent mark ~ with male dogs they tend to overmark on other dogs' scents. You have one female & 3 male dogs ~ have you noticed any pattern to the males overmarking where the female wees? This could have been the start of the problem, then a male dog overmarks, then the next male etc etc. Then it may have become a habit, so that the males overmark each other's urine.

Another thing very common in cats is that they use urine to claim territory, advertise their presence & inhibit the movements of other cats in their territory. Dogs may also scent mark territory. With cats, they should (& generally do!) scent mark around the periphery of their territory, which tends to be gardens & neighbouring gardens for most cats living in suburban areas, so not a problem . When cats start weeing indoors it is because they feel their territory is under threat & the most common places to urinate are around doorways, windows, main thoroughfares ~ all the places that the cat may perceive as "weaknesses" in their territorial boundaries. So when you say that the doors in your house are always open, I wonder if your dogs are scent marking in an effort to claim your house as their territory? Pehaps foxes, cats, badgers, hedgehogs etc visit your neighbourhood & with wide-open doors, maybe the dogs feel a bit vulnerable so scent mark to advertise their presence?

I do appreciate that it's a very hard problem to fix, especially given the longevity & extreme nature in your case.

Cleaning to remove odours is very important. I'm not sure of the constituents of dog wee but cat wee contains proteins & fatty lipids ~ they aren't removed with normal cleaning products! For cat wee I advise to clean as follows:

• Wash thoroughly with a biological detergent to break up the proteins ~ leave to dry.
• Where possible, wipe down the area with surgical spirit to break down the fatty lipids ~ leave to dry. You would need to spot test first to avoid damaging wood, soft furnishings etc.
• Wash with a biological detergent again & leave to dry.
• Remove anything heavily soiled, e.g wood that has been soaked with urine.
• Don't use any cleaners that contain ammonia ~ urine also contains ammonia!

Other than, that I don't know what to suggest ~ it seems you've tried lots of things. Would outdoor heated kennels be a possibility?

hallo that sounds hard, i heard of a friend who used belly bands with her male dogs, would you be able to try those possibly to break what is probably now an ingrained habit after over 12 months??
all the best and i hope you manage to find a solution!

Hey thanks for all your responses much needed food for thought. In answer to some of your questions the female dog pees ONLY in one spot and normally empties her bladder to the fullest (not really "marking" pee) and the other males have NEVER peed there. The areas they go are pretty random and varied, so I think you are right in that it is a habit now. It can be any time of day or night, we could be in the next room and they will do it. We have left the doors closed and ofc none of the dogs ask to go to the loo -.- It is annoying because we have trained them to go to the loo on command for this reason - take them out, wait for them to go, click and treat so they KNOW through this that going toilet outside results in a positive reward. At night we will pen them up during the day I think our main culprit (my border collie called steve) shall have to be penned up and will see what the others do. Steve does it the MOST and he is a BIG attention seeker and sulker. I am starting to think it's through his behavior that this began...

Firstly, I think it would be nice of your following posts refrained from using such bad language we can get the message without you having to make your point with swear words !!

Secondly, did you "toilet train" ALL individual dogs "individually?? they wont train themselves , and as others have mentioned, leaving doors open for them to go at leisure is not "toilet training".

You also now have a house for a toilet (as far as the dogs are concerned) with them all peeing in different places, opens up a new place for the others to pee around,

In simple terms, your house smells like their toilet, so you will have to work hard, to eliminate ALL smells.

I would treat all dogs as if they where new puppies and start a toilet regime , restrict ares, take them outside as many times a day as you need, (every half hr) get up through the night to let them ALL out , and close all doors, dont let them come and go as they please, they wont learn to control their bodily functions from having free access to the garden.

Totally agree with Jackie there, and Wilbar. You will have to physically take them outside at regular intervals, just like you have to do with puppies, whether they want to go or not, you still take them, so that they learn, this is the ONLY way they learn, not by leaving doors open I'm afraid, that comes after!!! Good luck, your house must smell awful, get the Marigolds out and start scrubbing!