There are many reasons why dogs pee when, where, and how they do, and peeing is not always scent-marking.

Different patterns of peeing are a testament to the amazing social, cognitive, and emotional lives of dogs.

Possible messages of peeing and scent-marking could be related to gender, mood, status, or territory.

Giving pees the chance to be decoded from the dogs' point of view will benefit our relationships with them.

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked about dog behavior deals with peeing. I usually say something simple like, "Dogs pee for a wide variety of reasons, and there's lots to learn."

This typically results in my asking why the person is asking me these questions, and then we often have a nice conversation that opens the door to many wonderful chats about the basic question: "Why do dogs pee when, where, and how they do?"

This is why I decided to write this brief guide to dogs' peeing patterns and what they might mean. Most, if not all, dogs would benefit from their own and others' humans giving pees a chance to explain themselves so that their canine ways of urinating are better understood and appreciated. Here, I'm playing off a wonderful phrase from dog trainer Jonas Thulin, who always exclaims, "Give pees a chance."

Let's see what science, stories, and some common sense tell us about patterns of canine peeing. Much of what I write here can be found in Dogs Demystified: An A-to-Z Guide to All Things Canine and has been updated to include more recent data.

Different ways of peeing and sending pee-mail

Simple peeing occurs when dogs urinate simply to empty their bladder because they have to go.

Scent-marking occurs when a dog intentionally pees in a specific place to convey information to other dogs, another form of sending “pee-mail.” Marking is different from merely randomly peeing anywhere when a dog simply has to go and it doesn’t matter where they do it. Messages from scent-marking could be related to gender, mood, status,........

© Psychology Today