female marking territory?

[loggerboots]

Hi,

 

My dog, Emmie, has been peeing four or five times on some walks (not all). She also cocks one leg up while squatting, which looks kind of funny... She doesn't seem to pee on vertical surfaces though.

 

She's intact and about 21 months old and has been through one heat cycle (two should be along any time now, unless she's on a yearly schedule). I've had her for a bit over two months and she's settled in very nicely into her new routine. The multiple squats per walk seems to be something that's come up in the past several weeks, I don't remember her doing it when I first got her.

 

She doesn't have indoor potty accidents and goes about 10 hours between her evening and first morning walk with no issues, so it seems she's fine with bladder control and whatnot. Makes me think it's intentional.

 

I wasn't aware that femals "marked". Maybe that's not what it is. Is this normal female behavior or could it mean a UTI or something?

 

Thanks

[Cynthia P]

Normal

[GentleLake]

Some females mark. My old gal -- ~15 y.o. -- has always been a marker as long as I've had her, 10 years now. And she was spayed right before she came to me.

 

My guess would be that the marking behavior is related to the upcomng heat, since she's only been doing it a short while and the heat is due. She may stop after the heat has run its course.

 

Or she just may be a female marker.

[Gideon's girl]

Loads of females do mark. Don't worry unless you see something else.

[Gloria Atwater]

Totally normal. We had a very doggy bitch once who hiked a leg at every chance. She also would back up and poop on top of things, but that was another story.

~ Gloria

[Beach BCs]

Totally normal. My oldest gal marks, hikes the leg a bit too.

[loggerboots]

Thanks folks,

 

I just took her out to the park and she managed to squat six times, which I think is a record. Glad to know it's normal and likely not a UTI - she's still on eye drops for conjunctivitis (from rolling in deer poo and getting it in her eyes), and a few weeks before that it was kennel cough... enough already

[maggiesmommy]

Normal. I've known a lot of females who mark. A had a female schnauzer mix as a kid who lifted her leg when she peed.

Good that you're looking out for signs of a UTI, though. Could you look at her urethra and check for signs of irritation/inflammation? Have you been able to see her urine and if it's pink or cloudy?

[Sue R]

Here's my totally unscientific approach to thinking about whether a bitch is marking or has a UTI - if she sniffs interestedly before she pees, she's probably marking. If she squats more often *real quickly* without a sniffing prelude, and especially if she seems to squat way longer than it should take to pee, I'd suspect UTI.

[Gideon's girl]

Also if she washes back there more than usual, I suspect a UTI.

[Sue R]

True, although if you have a bitch like our Megan, that can be hard to tell. Actually, when she had her one-and-only raging UTI last year, I noticed that she washed back there *less often*. She is an enthusiastic self-cleaner to the point that she will even pull tail hair (she came to us with a naked tail and sporadically she does revert to her old hair-pulling after washing-up). But when that UTI blew up (and it blew up fast because I would have noticed if it had been ongoing), she would get ready to clean up and then think about it and not - she was feeling that painful that she would not touch her own vulva to clean because it hurt too bad.

 

So, even though I agree that more vigorous washing-up can be a sign, so can a radical change in the other direction to *not* cleaning up.

 

I think the key is *change* of well-established habits.