female 6-month siberian husky pees in crate

Question
QUESTION: Hi, I have a 6 month old husky who pees in her crate when we leave her when we go anywhere.  She will pee in her crate whether we leave her for 30 mins to 8 hours while we are at work.  Could this be a behaviourial thing?  Is there a way we can get her to stop peeing in her crate?
Thanks!
ANSWER: First important question - how big is the crate?

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QUESTION: we have a crate that she can just stand up and trun around in and she pees in it.  she usually pees all over herself and is soaked when we get home.  she is fine being in the crate at night no peeing at night when we are home.

Answer
The important part is that the crate must not have an area where she can eliminate in and then go over to another side of the crate.  It doesn't sound like this is the case.  Instead, it appears that you are dealing with a seperation anxiety of some sort, as you say she is fine in the crate at night with you there.

Was this dog a rescue?  Often times rescue dogs have had bad experiences and these need to be slowly worked through.  To help identify if it is seperation anxiety or the crate, try to secure the room the crate is in (puppy-proof it and maybe lay some newspaper down or something).  Your next step would be to leave for a short time and see what happens.  If she does fine, slowly increase the time and see what happens.  It's even better if you can hear or video tape her reaction to see what happens.  If it is seperation anxiety, you may want to talk to your vet about calming medicines, but also new toys and long lasting chew bones often help.

If you notice that she just "hates" being crated while you are gone, you may want to look at other options of confining her while you are gone that at least allow her to urinate away from her.  Dogs are usually very clean animals, so the idea behind the crate training is that they will not eliminate in the area they sleep in.  If she has issues around being crated, you should work on confining her to a larger area and perhaps paper-training her.  That should at least help and allow her to not be forced to stay in her own urine.

Not that the age is a factor in this case, but remember that a Siberian as a rule should not be crated for any number of hours than the number of months they are old +1.  So a 6 month dog should be able to stay crated for about 7 hours.  It sounnds like bladder control is not an issue here however.

Let me know what kind of reactions you see or hear from these exercises and I'll see if we can come up with additional ideas.