How do I get my dog to stop urinating when I come home?

A lot of dogs tend to urinate when the owners first come home from being away and also when guests arrive.

Some will even urinate when meeting new people outside of the home.

There are two different reasons for this.

The first is called submissive urination. When a dog is really submissive and nervous, he will urinate as soon as he feels threatened, even if that is just meeting someone for the first time. The dog is basically telling the threat to “smell me all the way over here. I mean no harm.”

A good way to handle this is to reward any “brave” behavior the dog presents. Catch him before he rolls over on his back and give him something to do such as sit or down and then praise him. This will help build confidence.

The other type of urination is the excited kind. This can happen a lot in puppies. When their loved ones have been gone and they have been “holding” it for so long, they have accidents as soon as they see their owners because their bladders aren’t mature. Many puppies do grow out of this phase.

For the ones that don’t grow out of it, you have to ignore them. Let the dog calm down and then take them outside to empty their bladder, having the least amount of contact as possible with them.