Adopted Miniature Schnauzer

Question
Greetings Karen,

We have a 2 year old male miniature schnauzer, Rudy,that we
love dearly.  We recently adopted a 1 1/2 year old female
mini-schnauzer to be his companion and round out our
family.  She is party colored (I have never seen this in a
schnauzer) and extremely loving.  Her previous owners kept
her in a kennel 90 of the time so we are currently teaching
her social graces.  She is pretty much house broken, but
has one issue we have no idea how to correct.  She urinates
whenever someone new enters our house and whenever she is
around my 14 year old son.  She has even jumped up on his
bed and urinated on it when he simply acknowledged her with
a "good morning Piper".  She tend to do this when she is
very excited and even directly after she has urinated
outside.  I am not even sure how she can have so much
liquid in her.  We have tried controlling the amount of
water we give her and trying to keep her from getting too
excited, but with my son, he can just walk in the room and
she squats.  I guess Rudy spoiled us because we could not
have asked for a better pet, is this something typical in
the breed?  Do you think Piper will grow out of this and do
you have any advise on how to go about correcting her?  I
don't want to punish her because it does not seem she is
doing it out of defiance, she just can't help it. We love
Piper and giving her up is out of the question, we just
need some guidance on how to stop the urinating during
times of excitement. Thank you for allowing me to pose this
concern, I truly appreciate your time.

Answer
This is called "submissive urination", and basically, you just ignore it because the dog is anticipating being corrected for any wrongs she might have done. Simply put, she is apologizing. Keep all comings and goings very low-key without acknowledging the dog, and she should improve with time. I would be careful about limiting her water intake since schnauzers can be prone to urinary problems and you do want her to keep flushing out her system.

Put up a baby gate to the son's room, or do whatever is needed to keep the dog out of his room until she improves, and work on building up her confidence in the family by praising her quietly when she has done something good. Teach her a couple basic commands, such as sit or shake hands, so that you can have something to praise her for during the day.

http://www.perfectpaws.com/subr.html

http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/behaviourproblems/suburine.htm...