Is this a phase?

[Loripot]

Our husky, Demon, is just over one year old now. In general, he is a brilliantly behaved dog, and we've never really had any problems with him destroying our house since he was a young pup, apart from the odd accident of course. But it seems that all of a sudden his behaviour has taken a turn for the worse. Recently he has been urinating in our home, for no seemingly apparent reason. He goes out plenty of times a day, and he knows to go to the door when he needs to go out. But it seems like now he just does it without warning. It's strange because he doesn't cock his leg, or make any kind of indication, he just walks out of his bed and does it? He knows it's wrong and he immediately runs off in shame, but it doesn't matter how many times we tell him off, he keeps doing it and it's getting really stressful.

Today he crossed the line because we came downstairs to find he'd pee'd and pooped all over. He's never done this before so it was a big shock. We weren't out the house, he had just been outside and he was only alone for about twenty minutes tops. There doesn't seem to be any excuse for all his messes, so I'm thinking it may be a strange phase that I've heard of before. I've heard that dogs around this age sometimes experience what some people describe as 'going backward' in their training, so I'm wondering if this might be a similar thing. If it is, does anyone have any experience on this and is able to give us some advice? How long does it go on for, and is there anything we can do? We're in the middle of getting an extension built and our whole home is a mess, so this is just added stress that we don't need right now. I feel like he's ruining our new rooms before it's even finished. 

We usually trust him 100% out of his cage unsupervised, but now we're going to have to consider keeping him locked up so he doesn't keep doing this. The only problem there is he has bad separation anxiety, and screams the house down when he's locked up alone for too long. So I feel like we can't win here!

Please, any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Emma]

Have you had him checked over by the vet for physical reasons such as an UTI or diabetes?   If it were an overnight accident then I would have put down to getting caught short and not being able to wake anyone up but the part you described about him getting up from his bed and immediately urinating and then looking ashamed of himself, sounds like possibly he couldn't control himself.

[Loripot]

Nope he hasn't been checked, but he was at the vets recently, he got castrated about two weeks ago. Just had a thought, would that possibly be any cause for this problem?

He never does it during the night, as he sleeps in a crate. He does it during the day when we're just sat on the couch in the same room, right in front of us. It's not like he does it behind our backs when he'd been left alone, it's usually when we're there with him. So I'm not too sure why he does it. :(

[Sarah]

Oh that's stressful   Yeah they can go through phases - castrating may have caused the issue - it certainly wouldn't hurt to have the once over with the vet x

 

[Emma]

Neutering well may have something to do with it.  At any rate, even if a physical reason is excluded, once you can start ruling things out that it isn't then you will get closer to working out what it is.  

Cleaning areas thoroughly with a cleaner designed to eliminate pet urine will help deter repeat incidents in the same area.  Most normal cleaners just mask the smell to a human nose.  Doesn't work with dogs, their sense of smell is too powerful to be fooled.