Does this feel overwhelming to you?
Imagine if you were a puppy being greeted by a stranger.
It might actually cause you to pee all over the floor.
We wanna make sure that you're not making some of the common mistakes that
contribute to puppies peeing when they're greeting strangers.
The first thing that I'm going to work on if I have a puppy that might have an
accident in the house or pee when they're greeting someone,
is to set them up for success.
So I'm gonna make sure that I take my puppy outside and give her a chance to
completely empty her bladder and empty her bowels before I let anybody into the
home.
Something that is likely to set your progress back is other people out on the
street and other people are usually pretty well-meaning,
but it's almost impossible to see a cute puppy and not wanna run up to them
squealing, but try to make sure that doesn't happen to your puppy,
because especially if they're prone to peeing when they're greeting people,
you're gonna end up in a situation where that behavior gets rehearsed every
single time they see and get to greet a stranger. So what I like to do is
present my puppy as something that is, you know, in training.
So I will say to people, absolutely, you know what? My puppy is really friendly,
but maybe a little bit shy right now,
and maybe we can show you a trick instead of you coming in to say hello.
So what I'm really telling you is that you need to be ready to be an advocate
for your puppy at a moment's notice.
Anytime you see someone out there on the street,
you need to be ready to step in and help your puppy to be successful.
And always think about what is going to come in the future from your puppy
rehearsing things like peeing every time they greet people, that behavior,
once it continues to get practiced, is going to become habit for your puppy.
So we wanna avoid it as much as possible. You might be wondering what the
difference between submissive peeing and having an accident in the house is.
Submissive peeing will come with some very distinct body language.
Look for things like your puppy being overly wiggly.
You might see their butt going a million miles an hour.
Look for them sidling into people and starting to flop over on their back to
show their belly.
That's usually a pretty submissive gesture if their ears are pinned right back.
Things like that are really telltale signs that they're trying to show
submission, and you might end up seeing a submissive pee.
The next thing I want to talk about,
and this is a really common mistake that people make when you have your guests
come over, we want your puppy to be away in the crate where they're not gonna be
overwhelmed right off the bat.
A lot of times people will just let their puppies be loose right off the bat,
and then when guests come in,
inevitably the puppy is gonna get overwhelmed and they're gonna end up having
that little accident when they're greeting people. Having them in the crate to
start with and letting your guests come in and get settled gives you the
opportunity to allow them to calm down a little bit before coming out to say
hello.
A lot of times people make the mistake of thinking that this is a potty training
problem, and it is absolutely not.
It's not something that's within your puppy's control,
it's an involuntary release of their bladder.
So definitely we are not going to have any repercussions if they have this
accident. They have the accident. You need to do better at your job.
If it does happen,
you can take a moment to run your dog outside and see if they have more in their
bladder to go. But really what you wanna do is take them out of that,
maybe put them back in the crate for a couple of minutes,
see if you can drain a little bit more energy out of them,
and then see if you can assess how you approach them,
greeting that person the next time they come out. I know that every single one
of you is going to be itching to let your puppy out of the crate to go and greet
your guests, but understand that it might not happen right away.
Make sure that in the early days,
you set your puppy up in an out-of-the way space where they can be safe and calm
and quiet while you visit with your guests,
and it makes sure that there's no risk that anybody is going to come in and try
to interact with them through the crate and potentially overwhelm them and make
the problem worse. If your puppy is nice and relaxed at this stage,
it's time to bring them out and see how they do out and about with your guests.
But what I'm,
what you're not gonna do is bring them out and put them down on the floor and
let them charge up and say hello,
because that's gonna contribute to all that excited energy that tends to
contribute to them peeing when they're greeting people. So I'm gonna start by
having my dog just sit with me calmly, and this allows me to feel her energy.
It allows me to tell whether or not she is calm or she's too excited to go
and say hello at this stage.
And from here I can reassess whether I'm going to continue to let her calm down
or put her back in the crate or allow her to go and say hello to the guests.
If the guest is somebody that is not interested in helping you train your puppy,
they're probably gonna end up setting you back. So pick your guests wisely.
If it's somebody that doesn't mind taking some time and taking some coaching
from you so that you can set your puppy up for success, that is a great win,
especially in the early stages.
Think of these visits as training sessions rather than visits with your friends.
Something that you're gonna need to do is coach your guests a little bit on what
you expect from them. So if your puppy's nice and calm,
you might let them go and say hello.
But it's really important that your guests don't then overwhelm them.
And a lot of the time people will automatically lean over top of the puppy or
get really excited, or they use this hi pitch squeaky voice.
That only comes out when we have a puppy.
And a lot of times puppies will get overwhelmed by that and that will contribute
to the peeing.
So I'm going to coach my guest a little bit and make sure they know not to lean
over top of my puppy not to use those high squeaky voices and to be calm with
the greetings. My guest might just reach down and give my puppy a little tickle,
or they might just give them a little side eye contact,
but nothing that's going to make my puppy get overwhelmed in that moment and
send that energy through the roof again where I end up with peeing with
greeting. Now,
I can't possibly tell you everything that you'll need to know to raise a
confident well-behaved family member in our short YouTube video,
but luckily we have all of the tips that you will ever need,
plus individualized support in our Puppy Essentials program offered both
online and in person. If you'd like some information,
click the link in the description below.
Today we talked a lot about submissive peeing,
which is not a house training problem.
If you need some help with your house training, click this video right here.
And on that note, I'm instructor Shannon. Happy training .
That's nice. That's nice. She's got big floppy ears.