Tucker

My fiance and I own a dog named Tucker, who is half beagle, half dachshund, and half toddler. This means that he’s kinda loud, kinda stubborn, and likes to come at you with his paws toward your face and faintly smelling of urine.

He is housebroken, make no mistake about it. He knows that peeing outside is the right way to do things. I’ve been trying to figure out why sometimes he insists on urinating in the house, and I’ve come to the conclusion its out of spite. Tucker is simply upset that he’s a dog and we’re humans. And we outnumber him.

At first we thought it was “submissive urination”, which makes for some very interesting googling. Cesar wouldn’t have an issue with this, and since Cesar can do it, well, clearly I can handle this. The solution is to teach your dog tricks to increase his self-esteem. The theory goes that if you make him work for treats, he will feel like he accomplished something and thereby rewarding him with intrinsic pride.

I don’t know about you, but I had much higher self-esteem before I started doing tricks for rewards (ie, working). Those grade school years, man, nobody could touch my self-esteem. But I digress.

So we taught the dog tricks (by “we” I mean my fiance did). He is good at tricks now, and knows sit, shake, lay down, stay, and dance.

This stopped most of the little puddles when he felt sad, so we figured heading the right direction. However, one very annoying method of urination still continues. This is when we take him out for a walk, which he loves. He runs to the door all excited, and then its like he confuses walking out the door with leaping out of a small airplane. The usual result of this confusion is a puddle with him sitting in it. And not stopping. And the pee will be hitting him in the face.

Clearly our dog is defective. Most animals have a thing in their brain that says, “no pee in the eyes, its just not something you do.” Our dog does not. This morning, he jumped on me on the couch, sat down on my stomach, and peed on me and himself simultaneously.