urinating issue

Question
hi, thanks in advance for your answer.  we have had our 17 month old  cavalier king charles, turk since he was a puppy. on advice we bought him a cage and he has been in that every since he was young during the night, which he would cry when we put him in there. we thought as he was a little older now, we got him a basket and got rid of the cage. he is walked daily and has plenty of play time with us. however, he has got into the habit recently of urinating against ANYTHING during the night. the crunch came when he got upstairs for 2 mins and peed all up my wedding dres!! i dont really want to put him back into his cage as our house is quite small for a huge cage. i have taken his water off him about 7.30 and send him out for his last wee before i go to bed. apart from this, i just dont know what to do. i dont like telling him off in the morning as ive been told after the incident has happened, the dog will not know what he is being told off for. im at my wits end!! any suggestions?

Answer
Yes, it is true that he will not know what he did wrong the next morning. In fact, unless you catch him IN THE ACT, yelling at him won't solve anything.

I have two suggestions: One, neuter him if he is not already neutered. 12-18 months is the beginning of marking behavior, and it sounds like thats what he is doing, marking his territory. An unaltered dog will *almost* always mark, no matter what. So unless you are planning to show him, go ahead and get him neutered immediatly.

In the mean time, and for the next few months after he is neutered, you can have him wear a belly band at night when you aren't watching him. You can get these on many different internet stores, and even Ebay. The best ones are the ones with elastic sides so they "cup" his belly. All you do is put a maxi-pad on the band, velcro it around him and viola, no pee on any furniture. It works like a diaper. It also helps discourage marking behavior because he realizes that he isn't actually marking anything, so eventually he will get frustrated and stop. Plus, who likes to pee on themselves?

So again, without crating, the best two options are neutering and bellybands.

Hope this helps!