Help! My Dog is Peeing in the House!

QUESTION: I am emailing because I am having some issues with my 6 year old terrier mix (we think she is Yorkie/Cainrn terrier mix, but are uncertain since she was a rescue). My partner and I adopted her about 5 years ago from the Brooklyn pound and straight away we realized that she was house broken, because she would whine by the door when she wanted to go outside and she RARELY has accidents (almost never!).

We recently moved into a new apartment and all of a sudden she has been peeing in the house every single time we leave her alone, whether it is 20 minutes or two hours. Do you have any advice or suggestions?

ANSWER: We've had similar issues with our dogs after a move. Sometimes the stress of a move can cause dogs to exhibit behavior that has never been an issue in the past. Urinating in the house can be a problem - especially with little dogs (I have 2 Jack Russells so I feel your pain.) I would suggest crating her when you are not home. In order to get her used to the crate, you can feed her in her crate and if possible, have her sleep in her crate. Make sure that the crate is big enough for her to turn around in but small enough that she can't go to a corner of the crate to go "potty". Make sure that you take her out to go to the bathroom before you leave and as soon as you come home. Give her lots of praise when she goes potty outside.

She may also be smelling the urine of dogs that have previously lived in the apartment. You may want to consider having the carpet cleaned and then treating it with Nature's Miracle just to be safe.

It's really hard to correct behavior when you are not home, so deterring the behavior is usually your best bet.

The good news is - she's a little dog. So a crate isn't going to be a huge issue in your home. My pit mix had severe separation anxiety so we had to place a Great Dane crate in our bedroom for years. It took up half the room. It was the only size crate that we could get him to go into. But he was calm while he was in it, so we did what we had to do for our dog.

As a side note, if she starts urinating in the house when you ARE home, try tethering her to you. Buy or make a tether that is long enough so that you are not tripping over her, but short enough that she can't sneak off.

Let me know if this works or not. It's a pretty common problem (albeit a challenging one), but hopefully she will learn that in order to be out of the crate when you are not home, she has to hold it.

If you have any questions that you'd like to ask, please feel free to leave them in the comment block below and your question may appear in a future blog post!