How to train pug to overcome scent marking

When you see your pug, especially if male, “marking” its territory (or your home) with its urine, there is a good news and a not so good news for you here. It's good, because this is not really a house training concern. But on the other hand, its an issue of territoriality, and dominance. You ned to know that with scent marking, a pug can be house trained, and yet be a chronic marker in and outside the home.

Now, before we start solving the problem, we need to have a way of correctly identifying what is wrong in the first place. So the first thing that any pug owner will want to do at this point is to know what is the difference between lack of house breaking and simple scent marking.

Your pug has a scent marking issue, instead of the other, in case of the following.

1)The urine produced is really small (even negligible), and tends to be directed against vertical places.

2)The dog is male, unneutered, and around five or six months old. Unneutered pugs are markedly more territorial than neutered ones; homes with unneutered pugs will predictably have more occasions of scent marking. Unspayed females also mark, but not as much. While spayed and neutered pugs are not a hundred-percent free from marking, its relatively infrequent in their case.

3)Taking the dog outside to eliminate does not seem to affect the frequency of peeing.

4)Items that are new at home get “picked” on: new possessions, clothing of guests or their footwear, etc.

5)It is a multi-dog household in your area, and there is conflict between two or more of the dogs (yours sometimes included).

6)There are other unspayed and unneutered dogs in the area.

Now, how to train pug, or how can it be dealt with? Spay or neuter your pug as soon as possible. Doing this ideally by the time the dog is six months often halts marking in its tracks. But if your pug has been marking for a prolonged period of time, the dog may keep doing so after spaying or neutering, since a pattern of behavior is already in place.

Another thing you can do is to clean the soiled area completely. Get a non-ammonia based cleaner (otherwise, a pee-like smell is the result) and steer clear of vinegar (which can also resemble pee). Specifically, try Oxi-Clean with warm water.

Pugs tend to re-mark the same spots (most especially if past incidents can be detected in that poo or pee spot), so here are a few strategies you can try so the dog never revisits that spot. Try feeding the dog beside or on top of that spot. Play with it there, groom, put its bed over it, or sit down yourself or read something there.

Is there a rivalry between dogs in the household? Here are tips on how to train pug and dispel dominance issues. Any stress, or conflict resembles a power struggle most of the time. But after knowing that one dog is trying to bully the other, what then?

You can actually try reducing the stress at home by paying more attention to the dominant dog first. So this means feeding it first, and applying this to who to pet, give a toy, etc. This way, it is clear who is dominant dog, and when you show the other dogs that there is indeed a hierarchy among them, terrotial tendencies like marking tend to disappear overnight.