Robin and I were at a Christmas Party at some friends in Big Canoe on Monday. We had a great time and enjoyed playing with their Catahoula named Boone. We had given them some tips for Boone and the excitement of a party and they had put them into action perfectly. We enjoyed the party and the time spent with good friends and new acquaintances. One of our friends approached us, knowing that we were dog trainers. He had a full house of out of town guests visiting over Thanksgiving. It was a fun and crazy time. Things were fine until they left and things got back to (what they thought) were normal. All of a sudden, their perfectly potty trained dog began to potty all over the house. He did’t know what to do and wondered if Robin and I had any suggestions.
To answer this, I want you to recall when we were little and our parents would drop us off at Uncle John’s and Aunt Claudia’s for the weekend. Uncle John would take us to the movies, the local amusement park, and the ice cream store. Aunt Claudia would bake our favorite cookies and we could stay up late watching TV.
The weird thing was that when we arrived back to our home, everything we had on smelled like Aunt Claudia’s rose peddle perfume. Our Mom had to launder our clothes several times until she finally got that smell out. We wouldn’t wear those clothes because they smelled “icky”.
This same thing takes place to our house because of the house guests during the Holidays. They leave their “house guest smell” in our home’s guest room. We really don’t care because we understand that is just “Uncle John and Aunt Claudia smell” and it will dissipate in a few days. If now, we will just open the windows…
Our dog comes at this situation from a different angle. He expects “his territory” to smell the way it always does and does not accept the new smell. He needs to reestablish the prior smell and, unfortunately, he has only one tool to do that. He now wanders into the guest room and raises his leg. This is not good and we really don’t want to introduce his “urine smell” into our house.
First of all, we need to kill that new smell. Instead of our dog’s urine smell, we will introduce another, natural smell that we and our dog can accept as “our smell”. We recommend that you use the scent of lavender. This is a calming and universally neutral smell. Get a lavender Glade plug-in, a lavender candle, or a bamboo lavender oil vase and put it in the guest room. Use some lavender carpet dust if there is carpet or rugs in the guest room. Clean the hard floor in the guest room with a lavender scented cleanser. Just to be on the safe side, put some lavender Glade plug-ins in other rooms in the house.
Now you need to wash your dog with a lavender dog shampoo. At this point you have removed the “Uncle John and Aunt Claudia smell” from the guest room and have given the same, lavender smell to your dog. The room and he now smell the same. He no longer needs to raise his leg.
Leave the door to the guest room open for a few days but don’t allow your dog in the room. You should place a dog gate in the guest room doorway. This allows the room to “air out” and permits your dog to pass by but not go in the room until all the old smells have completely gone away.
You can take the dog gate down after about a week and you can probably stop using the lavender products after another another week or so (Uncle John and Aunt Claudia can really smell funny…).
The house smells have now returned to normal and you have reestablished the natural smells your dog recognized and accepts as the smells of a safe and secure area. The potty issue should now be a thing of the past.
Please call us at (770) 718-7704 it you are in need of any dog training help. We have a lot of good dog training advice at Best Dog Trainers Big Canoe Georgia. Find all our phone numbers, text addresses and email contacts at Dog Training Help Center Big Canoe Georgia.
Follow Us!