Marking - what to do?

devlee

Hi!
I have 2 male neutered shih tzus - 3 yrs old and 1.5 yrs old. Over the past 4 days I have come home from work (gone 7.5hrs) to find lots of spots that they have marked on the walls/carpet. This is a new behaviour indoors. They are avid "markers" when outside but, other than when the older one first entered our house, have never done it indoors before. I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what has changed all of a sudden and I'm not coming up with any answers.

They both came to me as adults and have never been crated. I tried the crate training and they were miserable. During the night they are gated in the kitchen but during the day they can go into the living room. Both love to sit on a stool at the front window and watch the goings on all day so I've let them have access. I'm going to be gating them in the kitchen during the day to make clean up easier but I really want the behaviour to stop. I use a lot of water and vinegar to clean up and they have mostly found new spots each day to leave their mark. They never do this while we're at home.

Any suggestions as to how I can extinguish the behaviour when I'm not home to catch them in the act?

TIA!

hulkamaniac

You can't. You have to treat it as a housebreaking incident.

Thracian

Sudden change in behavior = vet visit to rule out a medical cause.

That's where I would start.

Cracker

Do they have access to any windows to watch the world? Sometimes marking in adult, housebroken dogs can happen due to stress of some kind. Maybe something outside, or work going on in/around the house is triggering a stress/territorial marking behaviour?

Since you don't know for sure which dog it is, I would have both vetted..blood and urine if you can, to ensure you are not dealing with an underlying illness and to check for any wounds/injuries that may show they redirected on each other....

Once you have determined they are both healthy, rehousebreaking is the usual thing. Be sure to remove all traces of the urine with an enzyme based cleaner to prevent remarking over it....

corgimom6092

In the meantime, get yourself a couple of belly bands for your boys. You can get these at pet stores and they work great for catching that potty, especially if you can't supervise them 24/7 (who can?). I used one on my rescue until he was comfortable in the house - just got a bag of cheap maxi-pads from Target - the little pads that they sell to go with them don't hold urine - and put one in the band. Viola - potty on the pad, not on my furniture or floor.