This week, I worked with a few families that were concerned about their dog’s frequent urination during walks (as well as inside their home). Some dogs are quite nervous and skittish while others are aggressive and dangerous during their walks.

At times, their dog seemed solely focused on pulling their parents home as soon and as fast as possible. Yet, these dogs also make many stops to urinate. Despite knowing they’re walking back to the safety of their home. They’ll constantly (try) to urinate despite knowing there’s nothing left in their bladder.

Why does your dog constantly urinate? Delving deeper below the surface of what is often said by parents as irritating and time-wasting urination stops, is determining the possible psychological reasons ‘why’ in their highly nuanced physical (behavioral) traits.

A dog that urinates frequently during walks experiences psychological issues (aka dysfunctions). The belief there is dominance (of territory, etc…) is too generalized a description.

Behavior is psychological. How your dog feels about themselves and in relation to the rest of their ‘world’ is undeniably a fundamental influence of your dog’s personality.

By teaching parents how to identify their dog’s ‘why’ at the root psychological level, relative to human behavior (psychosis), shows parents how to naturally recognize these nuanced physical behaviors and how dysfunctions negatively evolve for your dog. You want your beloved dog child to feel safe so they don’t feel their anxiety to empty their bladder.

The first thing I tell parents is to dispose of their collective assumptions their dog is being dominant and/or territorial. In any scope of life. When I intake a genuine predator dog, I absolutely know their behavior regardless of terrifying extreme manifestations is absolutely rooted in their insecurities (generally termed as ‘fear’), which I touched on lightly in my first blog.

As I’ve stated, behavior is psychological. Behavior is purely the functional consciousness of your dog to have their own unique personality with all the quirks and joys your dog can process and comprehend. This is most often the case in a healthy dog than it is due to a medical issue. How your dog feels about their self (ego-centric) and their world around them directly relates to how you have taught them your vigilance in keeping them safe in the scary outside world. Dog parents must not just teach trust but consistently prove that you have learned how to recognize when your dog needs to feel safe and protected. Even a dangerous dog such as Gordon with a severe disability can learn to trust us to keep them safe:

You’re asking your dog to trust you implicitly in every single aspect of their life. Danger being the most crucial threat (as a generalized ‘fear’). The outside world is very, very scary for a lot of dogs. For example, things such as cars, skateboards, strollers, etc…are all human-made. Don’t make the mistake of assuming your dysfunctional dog isn’t ‘afraid’ as you both go for a walk. Yet, we must recognize the dilutive scale of psychology (relational functional consciousness) with which dogs are capable of processing at their rudimentary logic and emotional level.

Many seemingly innocuous issues to parents can be a very real concern of personal safety to your dog. For example, remember when you were a child walking down the street and a huge, noisy semi-truck is coming the other direction. You immediately think it’s driving toward you. As much as you knew the truck is travelling safely on the road and won’t deviate it’s direction, nor try to run you over, you still felt so scared and confused that it may inevitably run into you.

You immediately clung close to your parents for safety. It isn’t the physical fear as per se but the threat to your basic ego and self-preservation from harm and disablement. There may even be concerns about dying should the truck hit you. These are extremes in how your dog cogently processes this potential dangerous issue relative to their comprehension level.

Most vehicles travel at speeds far faster than your dog can run. Your dog’s ability to velocity target becomes illogical. In my first blog, I used the example of ‘bringing Tarzan from the jungle to New York city’ to give readers a comparable perspective. Tarzan would freak out and look for anywhere to escape from the harsh cacophony of our crazy busy human societal construct…you’re asking your dog to trust you as their human parent(s) to keep them safe while visually gigantic objects comes closer and closer exponentially (beyond forced perspective relative to your dog’s field of vision processing).

You’re asking your dog to trust you while telling them to ignore an obvious gigantic, inanimate objects moving magically and autonomously at ‘directly’ at them at unfathomable speeds (to their historical knowledge and life’s experiences). Think of the first time you heard someone described a UFO sighting and how your mind immediately became concerned about what ‘threat’ it (and the occupants) could do to you, your family and the world. This illogical hypothetical feeling is very real to your dog.

There are many different types of psychological dysfunctions that are either already a part of your dog’s innate personality or begins to manifest that will cause them to urinate frequently…and of dysfunctions that can, and will, develop from ancillary traits. A layered concern to keep in mind for parents of skittish dogs is your dog’s already heightened concern about being outdoors as they inherently suffer from agoraphobia.

Your dog has no idea what to do and psychologically, they become overwhelmed trying to overcome their (illogic) concerns the truck may careen into them. This encompasses a strong psychological shock which becomes overwhelming and becomes unmanageable for your dog to do so on their own. Your dog may urinate frequently to deliberately (cogently) delay walking in hopes of avoiding more vehicles through their tacit obfuscation.

This insecurity is a dysfunction based on your dog’s psychological cogency level to ‘work it out’. Your dog becomes afraid and cores down to their primal emotions for efficiency of functional resources. Your dog becomes nervously self-aware of their body and they begin to notice what’s making them physically distracted, such as a partially or empty bladder. Remember as a child when you were about to go on a long car ride and your parents instructed you to use the bathroom before leaving…and within minutes of driving, you’re feeling the need to urinate? Apply this (psychological) feeling at a dilutive scale of cogent awareness in your dog’s mind.

Helping your dog with reducing their urination frequency is very important. It’s not only relational to your family’s proof of inclusion of your dog, it’s how you can teach them to feel safe inside and outside their home. It reduces your dog’s habit of using urination as a distraction to further self-enable their psychological dysfunction.

Frequent urination creates a cyclic, obsessive structure that your dog (and you) don’t realize you’re enabling.

My next blog will explain my simple, straightforward parenting protocols I use to teach dogs they don’t need to urinate constantly. How to teach your dog that when they do urinate (or defecate) that you, their human parent, recognizes how very scared they are…and how to help your dog truly feel safe with you. Without needing to use any training aids nor food/treats.

By utilizing our innate compassion intuitively to stabilize your dysfunctional dog.