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Dog marking?
About a week ago we adopted a 2 year old male lab/lab mix. He's an absolute doll with the exception of a few things; the most difficult to deal with being marking. I've had male dogs before (in fact, our 11 month old is a male) but I guess I've gotten lucky because none of them have ever gotten into the marking habit.
This wouldn't be too big of a deal with the exception of he marks inside. I assume it's since our other dog is male as well, but my husband is getting very frustrated. He always marks in different places, in different rooms so it's not a particular spot. It's actually never been in the same spot. I don't think it's a need to go to the bathroom thing because we take him our fairly often, and he'll go right after coming in after he's already gone.
Is there anything I can start doing that will hinder him from doing this?
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Re: Dog marking?
Are you cleaning the spots with Nature's Miracle or some other enzymatic cleaner? Even though he isn't going in the same spot all the time, he can smell where he went and may think that means it's ok to go inside.
Also, I would consider tethering him to you for a bit. That way you can keep a close eye on him, and any time he makes a move to mark, you can interrupt and whisk him outside if necessary. When we adopted our second dog (both males), he was crated or tethered to one of us for the first 4-5 days in case of accidents, chewing, interactions with our first dog, etc. It also helped form a bond immediately since he had to follow us around everywhere. Essentially, treat him like a puppy even though he isn't one.
He's marking because you're letting him mark. Tell your husband that instead of getting frustrated, he should do something about it.
We had a foster who liked to mark anything. In the house, in the garage, the car itself, other dogs...he'd mark literally anything. Within 24 hours we realized this was a problem, and we started tethering him. We assumed that he was going to mark, so instead of letting him, we supervised him at all times. If he wasn't tethered to us, he was crated. He slept in his crate. He was crated when we weren't home. We cooked dinner with Kendrick tethered to us. Tether tether tether. We'd correct ("ah ah") when we saw him start sniffing around, and within a few days, he'd stopped the marking altogether.
The solution is to prevent the dog from doing it, not to correct after the fact. Tethering really works...give it a shot!
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