1 Year old still wetting in house.

[RebeccaBarnes]

We have a Welsh Springer Spaniel. He will be 1 year old June 6th. 

We are desperate for help regarding urinating in the house. He never defecates in the house. I feel certain he knows he's to urinate outside. Often, when he's crated he will lift his leg to spray outside the crate. This can occur after he's been outside. He also does "the happy tinkle" when someone comes to visit even though they ignore him.

Any suggestions? 

[Adrienne]

Hi Rebecca,

Welcome to the forums!

Spaniels are rather "soft dogs"and have a tendency for excitement and submissive urination. If this is from excitement from visitors entering the home, and ignoring isn't working, you can try distracting him by dropping high value tasty treats to the ground. This works both as a distraction, reducing his excited focus on guests, and also to creare positive associations with the guests' arrival and giving an alternate thing to do. After some time, you can also try adding some sits and rewarding those which also help in increasing your dog's confidence. Here is a read about excitement urination: 

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/urinating-when-excited/

About the peeing in the crate, that's sure interesting! So he raises his leg inside the crate and aims outside of it? It sounds like urine marking if he has peed before outside. Is he neutered? Is the crate very large? 

It can be insightful recording his behavior when left alone in the crate and then watching it. This to see whether there is some trigger such as a certain sight or sound, whether he shows signs of separation anxiety (mostly whining, howling, barking, peeing, chewing etc), but also to see if the urination is part of the excitement tinkle he does and therefore happens when he hears you arriving home or approaching the crate.