When you brought your puppy home, you expected pee. But how much is too much? Sometimes, it can seem like they pee every 10 minutes! How often is too often, you may wonder?
In general, past 3 months, a pup can hold it for one hour for every month of age. If you notice that your pup is peeing more often, there may be a problem, either emotionally, behaviorally, or medically. The good news is, most potty problems can be solved when you know the cause.
Is Your Pup on a Schedule?
The most common reason puppies pee too often is that they eat and drink freely. When they eat on demand, they want to drink on demand. The more they drink, the more they urinate. Choose specific times each day for feeding, water, and elimination, and stick to the schedule as much as possible.
Is it Emotional?
Puppies can pee if they get too emotional. There are three primary causes of emotional urination: Excitement, anxiety, and submission.
If urination happens in excitement, the best thing you can do is let your pup out before an exciting event. For example, take a potty break as soon as you come home or right before you get in the car.
Anxiety urination occurs when a puppy is uncomfortable with a situation and loses control of his or her bladder. You will need to teach your pup to become more comfortable in the situation through conditioning training.
Submission urination happens when your pup communicates that it is not threatening. Usually, they show their stomach first. If this happens, make yourself as nonconfrontational as possible.
Is it Behavioral?
Behavioral issues typically result from either lacking training or are due to territorial marking.
Lacking training can be fixed with a solid week at home with a schedule. As you teach your puppy that outside is for peeing, you should stop seeing urination in the home.
Marking is common with unneutered male dogs. Dogs do this to leave their scent somewhere that they have claimed. Females can also mark sometimes. The best solution for this is to neuter your dog and correct any time that you see any indoor urination. Interrupt the peeing and redirect outdoors.
The key is that if your puppy pees inside, you make sure that you clean the urine off of the floor properly. this means using enzyme cleaners that will remove all signs of the scent. If your puppy can still smell the urine, he or she will continue to go there.
When to Seek a Vet
If you try everything on this list, it could be that something else is going on. It could be that there is a medical cause for frequent urinating, such as suffering from a urinary tract infection. Or, if you notice that a previously potty-trained puppy is now urinating indoors, you should have them evaluated by a vet to eliminate any medical causes that may require treatment before resolving.
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