Chewed Slippers

Elizabeth asked the petsperts®:

“How do I get my 2 20 month old Chocolate labradors completely dry at night? No problems during the day, but never completely reliable at night since we’ve had them at 8 weeks. They both go out last thing and have a wee in our garden but then I can come down in the morning to find more wee on newspaper that I leave down and then put out in the garden. Also one of them poos overnight generally - how do I adjust his two feeds in the day to ensure he does not poo overnight? I keep a diary and we have not had a completely dry night since 20 January - please help!”

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Hi Liz,

This is a really nasty problem to live with, and I really sympathise with you. I’ve had a bit of experience with this myself; Homer’s liver problem meant that I needed to take him for walks every two hours including overnight for many years, while my rescue Rottweiler was a little “confused” when I first got him and proceeded to use my mother’s home as a toilet. Of course, him being cuter than me, mother yelled at me instead.

Thankfully, my dogs’ problems and the reasons for them were really obvious to start with. In your case, it’s a little less clear cut. The first thing we need to do is work out who the culprit / culprits are. Separate them out overnight (in different rooms, protecting carpets as best you can - I find combinations of plastic sheeting or binbags and newspaper useful!). If you do this for a few nights, they won’t like it but you should soon get a feel for who’s doing what.

A large number (up to 50%) of behaviour problems can have a root in some actual bodily disease process, so that’s the next thing to consider. Particularly with inappropriate urination in young dogs, there are a large number of possible causes - however, the answers to the questions you kindly took the time over for me suggest that bodily disease is less likely. The history of infection is a concern - an ongoing low-grade infection could cause inappropriate urination, but it could also have just kick-started a bad habit of peeing in the wrong place.

Peeing too much can be linked with drinking too much - normal levels of water intake are 50-100ml per kilogramme of dog over 24 hours, on the lower end of the scale if the food is moist, on the higher end if it is unmoistened dry food. I suspect that the levels you mention are about normal, but it would be worth re-checking for each dog as an individual, again by separating them out for 24 hours if possible.

In an ideal world, we rule out all chances of bodily disease by screening the perpetrator once we know who our criminal doggy is. Urine tests including microscopy and blood tests are an obvious choice, and faecal analysis may be helpful to rule out gut problems. This does get expensive, and unless the doggy is showing specific signs on examination by your vet, it’s largely done expecting to find not much, just to prove that the problem is definitely not a subclinical issue. Any specific clinical signs will lead to specific investigations - but your story suggests that there won’t be much there. Still, better to check than to miss something!

That leaves my suspicion that these are behavioural specifically, but before I wax lyrical on those (or even better, get my colleague Dr. Roger Mugford to do so, as one of the best in the behaviour business). For the moment, I’ll give you the advice that the dogs must be totally over-loved and treated (lotsa hugs, high-value treats - stuff they REALLY like) when they go to the toilet in the right place, make sure they get a walk out to go regularly especially last thing at night and after meals, and just get them used to feeling good about holding it in and going in the right place. Never tell them off for going in the wrong place - things like rubbing their noses in it are frequently talked about but tend to traumatise the hound and make him scared of going to the toilet AT ALL, rather than making them understand where the boundaries are. (Again, my Homer had this treatment from some previous owners, and it took *ages* to get him right - 9 year on, the poor boy still tells you he wants to go to the toilet by acting like a dog who’s been scolded severely!)

If you can get answers to some of the stuff I’ve mentioned, and then see your vet, they should be able to help you. Let us know how you get on - good luck.

Tony x
Resident Vet and petspert® at Chewed Slippers

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Tony was able to come to the conclusions above using the following answers that Elizabeth provided:

1. Both dogs are nearly 2, can you confirm? male/female? neutered or not?
Toffee and Fudge were born in May 2008 and we got them in the July, so they are now about 21 months old. They are brothers and were neutered in Jan 2009.

2. Where are they kept, day and night?
I work Wed pm, Thursday and Friday, so the early part of the week when I am at home they are kept in the house except when I go out for 2 or 3 hours when I generally leave them in their outdoor run which has a kennel. At night they are kept in our utility room - they were not crate trained as we have no room in the utility room for 2 crates and we did not do it for our other 2 dogs. When I am at work they are in the run all day and can therefore urinate and defecate when they please. They NEVER mess in the house during the day even in the utility room.

3. When are they walked? What access to the toilet do they have?
My husband takes them out first thing in the morning for about 10 minutes for a run about and them I take them out for about an hour in the afternoon. I will let them out mid morning to see if they wish to go - sometimes Fudge does. When I am at work I have a dog walker who takes them out for ¾ hour, again in the early afternoon. They do not always poo on these walks but generally pee. I will then let them out after their evening feed about 6pm so they can run around the garden and pee/poo if they wish. At the weekend they have two longer walks - up to an hour each.

Access outside is variable but Fudge will often ask to go out and if he does I let him out and he pees, Toffee also goes out but does not always pee and he does seem to be able to hold it better than Fudge. Fudge may pee once every 4 hours or so, Toffee holds it longer.

4. when did problems start?
We never got them properly housetrained at the start - we started to get dry nights about Aug 2008, but we went on holiday for a long weekend at the end of November 2008 and left them in kennels so although after that we got dry nights say 3 out of 7 we could not guarantee it. This carried on throughout the first part of 2009 and during the summer things got a lot better having on one occasion 18 dry nights on the trot (I kept and still keep a diary of all this).

Then things went downhill because Toffee got a bladder infection in August 2009 which took 6 weeks to clear up - he was only dry during that time when he was on antibiotics and it took 3 different types before the infection went. However the dry nights did not return. By Jan 2010 they could be dry for up to 3 nights at a time (this is pee and poo) - when they were not dry sometimes there was just one wee or poo or 2 wees and 2 poos - any combination really. Things are bad at present - the last totally dry night was 20th Jan. We know that they have held it for 9 ½ hours when we overslept one night! According to the kennels where we leave them they are generally dry overnight.

We obviously don’t know for certain who is responsible - often I think it is Fudge responsible for the wee as Toffee will go out first thing and wee and generally poo as well but Fudge sometimes won’t pee first thing or poo. My husband always takes them out last thing at night (I won’t let them out after 6pm as I want them to be desperate to go) but even if they both wee then there is often wet newspaper in the morning.

I have tried to restart their toilet training by putting down newspaper and then leaving the soiled stuff outside in the morning. However this has not worked. I tried no newspaper but then I had an even bigger job clearing up. I always use biological washing powder to wash the floor.

5. How much water do they drink in a 24 hour period? What’s the rest of their diet? Are motions normal?
They drink about 2 litres each of water in a 24hour period and they have about 300gms each dry Royal Canin Labrador Retriever food split into two meals, one in the morning and one in the evening. Is this OK - neither are overweight - Fudge is about 30 Kilos, Toffee about 28 Kgs. Their motions are always normal. My own vet nurse told me I should adjust the dry food to try and get rid of the pooing at night but I can not work out whether the poo at night is the day before’s breakfast or evening meal so I’m not sure which to cut down. Are two meals a day better for dogs of this size than one meal a day? We started dampening the food as advised by vet nurse and this does not seem to have affected the situation.

6. Is urine found only after lying down? Do they ever seem unaware that they’re urinating? Do they dribble urine when they’re walking about?
I only ever find the urine in the utility room in the morning, they don’t dribble whilst they are walking about. They have never cocked their legs and always squat but I have been told this is not significant.

7. Are they able to initiate urination ok normally? Does urine look normal?
They appear to initiate urination normally and their urine samples were both tested last October by my vet and were normal.

8. When walking to they urinate with normal frequency and produce normal amounts?
They generally urinate once whilst walking (sometimes twice). The amounts look OK.

9. Do they have any other behaviour issues (e.g. anxiety problems)?
I don’t think they are anxious - when in the house they spend most of their time asleep! I’m the anxious one!!