What’s the Difference Between Peeing and Marking?
Your dog may pee inside if they haven’t been let out enough, if they have a small bladder, or for many other reasons. But the peeing will result in a full puddle of urine.
Whereas, dogs that urine mark will only squirt out a small amount of urine and will often do it on the same spot or object.
Although it’s natural behavior, it’s certainly not acceptable in the house. Furniture, floors, walls, and other items are ruined or damaged when your dog decides to claim them as his own.
Urine marking is not the result of faulty housebreaking. In fact, most of the time, urine marking can be curbed with behavior modification.
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Adjust Behavior at the Moment
Your dog is a Zen master, and by that, I mean they live in the moment. You can’t reprimand your dog for something they did half an hour ago; they simply won’t understand what you’re scolding them for. This only causes them confusion, and it wont solve anything.
You’ve got to keep a close eye on your dog, follow them around if you have to (as pet parents, sometimes we have to do silly things to get to the root of an issue) so that you can catch them in the act and show them at that moment that No! marking inside the house is not acceptable. If your dog is a quick learner, this may be one of the easiest ways how to stop a dog from marking in the house.
How to Stop a Dog from Marking
Although this is a difficult behavior to break, taking the following steps can improve the situation.
How to Stop Your Dog From Peeing Indoors
Celebrity dog trainer Victoria Stilwell on how to keep your dog from using your living room as a toilet.
“We adopted a young male dog from a puppy mill who is an ideal playmate for our female dog and is perfect in all ways but one: though we walk him multiple times a day, take him out after meals and pay close attention to him, he still pees in the house, and will even lift his leg on us! Weâve taken him to the vet and he received a clean bill of health. How can we stop our dog from scent marking our house â and ourselves?”
Scent marking is a very normal and common behavior, particularly in male dogs, but it becomes a big problem when marking occurs in your house. Dogs mark to advertise their presence and to claim territory and resources. Pee and poop contain pheromones, or chemical messages, that convey information â age, gender, health, and reproductive status â about the dog doing the marking.
Resources such as toys, food bowls, chew treats, bones, and beds are the most likely objects to be marked. As youâve experienced, a dog will also actually mark a person or something that smells heavily of that person, such as a sofa or bed.
Even though marking can have a dominant and competitive component, it may also occur if a dog is overstimulated â for example, during or after vigorous play â or becomes anxious in a particular situation, such as when a person leaves. This common expression of anxiety in dogs is often mistaken for spite, resulting in punishment, which only serves to increase the anxious behavior. Scent marking is also more common in multi-dog households where dogs compete for space, resources, and human attention.Related article
Unlike with submissive urination which is typical in puppies, both sexes scent mark, but intact males are the worst offenders, as signaling sexual availability and claiming territory is âencouragedâ by the presence of testosterone. In many cases, neutering can significantly reduce a dogâs desire to scent mark, but some continue even after they have been neutered.