# My dog pees out of his crate... help?



## reverie7 (Aug 16, 2010)

My husband and I adopted a half lab half australian shepard a few months back, he's now almost a year old and we have successfully trained him to do his buisness outside and all his basics. And he now is _finally_ going to his crate on command and doesn't need to bribed into it (for awhile there he was breaking out of his crate and then proceeding to break into his food bin/ ruin our vaccum, but we managed to fix that problem, good ol' bungee cords) Only problem now is he won't stop peeing while we are gone. But he's too smart for his own good and I honestly think he does it as revenge for leaving him alone, because he doesn't pee in his crate, he aims out of the crate... Thank god his crate is in the laundry room! It's just getting annoying to clean it up all the time. We feed him in his crate all the time now and have started putting him out on our balcony with the blinds closed while we are home so he can get used to being alone. We also take him on walks daily, play with him constantly, limit his water and take him out before we leave. And I know he can hold it until we get home because when we are home all day he never so much as glances at the door to go out from early morning until evening. Anyway, does anyone have any clever ideas to get him to stop? Are there anti-pee sprays out there?


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## qingcong (Oct 26, 2009)

Rest assured that your dog is not peeing out of revenge. Dogs are not capable of the mental thought process required for acts of revenge and spite. If they were, watch out, cause we do some stupid stuff to them!

He probably pees outside of his crate to keep from soiling up his living quarters, it's natural instinct to want to sleep somewhere clean. He might be stressed while you are away for so long. Do you know if he exhibits signs of anxiety in his crate? Is he bouncing everywhere inside the crate when you come home?

Another thing, are you giving him something to do in the crate? With my dog, I fill up some kongs with frozen wet food so that he has something to work on while we're gone. It's totally not fair to just expect him to love being in there without anything interesting to do. 

One idea I had was to cover up the crate with a blanket or something so that he can't pee outside. Hopefully then he won't pee inside either and will learn to hold it in. Just an idea...


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## Binkalette (Dec 16, 2008)

Anti-pee sprays? lol.. none that I know of! 

I would get some plexi glass and cut it down to size to fit maybe 3/4 of the way up the sides of his crate on all sides. This way if he pees it will run back at him and (hopefully) he will get the idea that peeing in the crate = laying in a puddle of my own urine = don't do that. Just be sure he has gone out before you put him in and after you get home.


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## qingcong (Oct 26, 2009)

Binkalette said:


> This way if he pees it will run back at him and (hopefully) he will get the idea that peeing in the crate = laying in a puddle of my own urine = don't do that.


NO! For housebreaking, the goal is always to set the dog up for success. While that idea is clever and offers the dog an immediate punishment for his actions, there's a high probability you teach the dog to associate the crate with something negative and a low probability that you actually teach the dog to not pee. Another issue is that if the dog is forced to lay in his own pee for hours, he may just habituate to it and not even think it's a big deal to pee in the crate anymore.


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## Binkalette (Dec 16, 2008)

So use a blanket so he just keeps doing it.. only now she has to wash the floor AND the blanket? I am not a fan of crating to begin with.. but I've always been a much bigger fan of the solid plastic crates than the wire ones. It sounds like the OP IS setting her dog up for success, but he's just not getting it. My idea is only to help him get the idea. If he doesn't get it, one would obviously stop. But if he CAN'T pee outside the crate and he DOESN'T want to lay in a puddle of pee, then he won't. Plain and simple. That's the whole idea behind crating to begin with.


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## qingcong (Oct 26, 2009)

Well, the difference between the blanket and the plexiglass is that the blanket is a barrier the dog can actually see, and would hopefully PREVENT him from doing it in the first place. The plexiglass is a trick to bait him into messing up. I mean, it could work to teach him a lesson, but I'm skeptical because dogs are pretty bad at reasoning. Generally, it's not sound training practice to set a dog up for failure with no option for success.


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## reverie7 (Aug 16, 2010)

we did try some light weight towels over his crate for awhile, and it helped, for a bit... then he just peed on the towels, plus his crate got really stuffy. It's not an every time thing with him though, and he does get upset when we leave, trying to dig his way out. We give him a kong with peanut butter, but usually he won't touch it until we get back home, so we'll take it away (crate only treat). His anxiety has gone down a lot since we got him and we would prefer to leave him out of his crate actually, but he's destructive when we're gone and we can't risk him chewing through our drywall. He actually loves being left out on our balcony, but we live in AZ and it's the middle of the summer so that's not an option right now either. I think we'll try the towel thing again and see if it helps. any other ideas would be appreciated.


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## Binkalette (Dec 16, 2008)

We leave our dogs out now when we leave. We started by having them in just one dog-proof room, and then eventually made it the room + stairway + entryway (blocked off w/ baby gates) and now they have run of the house. We just have to make sure the bathroom door is closed and the bedroom closet. Somebody has a bad habit of taking dirty clothes out of the closet and chewing up toilet paper rolls.  They don't get into any trouble when we're gone.. and I think it's nice for them to be able to sleep in their favorite spots, play with their toys and look out the windows.


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## qingcong (Oct 26, 2009)

reverie7 said:


> we did try some light weight towels over his crate for awhile, and it helped, for a bit... then he just peed on the towels, plus his crate got really stuffy. It's not an every time thing with him though, and he does get upset when we leave, trying to dig his way out. We give him a kong with peanut butter, but usually he won't touch it until we get back home, so we'll take it away (crate only treat). His anxiety has gone down a lot since we got him and we would prefer to leave him out of his crate actually, but he's destructive when we're gone and we can't risk him chewing through our drywall. He actually loves being left out on our balcony, but we live in AZ and it's the middle of the summer so that's not an option right now either. I think we'll try the towel thing again and see if it helps. any other ideas would be appreciated.



It sounds like you need to do some crate training on the side. Trying to dig his way out is not what we want to see when we put the dog in. The peeing isn't the real issue, the issue is that he gets anxious and frustrated in the crate when left alone. Getting him to see the crate and people leaving as a positive thing will solve the pee issue. 

Just to see if it works, try using something more delicious than peanut butter. Having recently moved into a new house, I had to sort of re-crate train him in this new place. I froze chicken broth in an ice cube tray and stuck some of the cubes in a kong. He clearly loved the chicken broth so much that he couldn't care less about us leaving, and that's exactly what we want, for them to not even notice us leaving. 

You may already be doing this, but don't make a big deal about leaving. Don't do any of that "Will you be a good boy for mommy???" stuff, it just feeds the anxiety. Be sure to keep comings and goings low key and matter of fact.


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