Is there a way to get a dog NOT to pee on a certain thing?

July 24, 2021 2:24 PM

Area outside of a house. It's been peed on. Which then makes other dogs pee on it. Yellow rinse and repeat. So how do you break the cycle? Is there a scent there you can put to make them NOT want to use it? Or a scare crow for urination? Anything?
posted by rileyray3000 to Pets & Animals (6 answers total)

Assuming it's a washable thing, I would first wash it with the strongest cleaner you can use that's still safe for what it's made of and any vegetation around it, and then I would spray it routinely with a perfumey enzyme cleaner.

But part of what appeals to dogs to pee on something is it sticking up higher than stuff around it, so ultimately this may not really work very well without also putting something around it to keep them from getting to it...which they will then pee on.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:50 PM on July 24, 2021

Dogs have ultra sensitive noses and now that this has happened it will be very hard to mask or remove the smell. Even if you wash it off the fence, it will be in the surrounding soil and other dogs will still smell it and pee there to claim their territory over the previous dog.

I think the only real solution is to fence the area off.
posted by Jubey at 2:52 PM on July 24, 2021

I think a scarecrow for canines might just be a vacuum cleaner rigged up to a motion sensor.
posted by deludingmyself at 5:06 PM on July 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

Enzyme cleaner is magic. I use this stuff indoors. You should be able to buy something similar in the natural cleaners section at a grocery store.
posted by aniola at 6:28 PM on July 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is a tough one (and why I never let my male dog pee on buildings but unfortunately other dog owners aren't so considerate). A decoy might work, if you can find something you don't mind getting peed on in a close location, combined with thorough enzymatic cleaning of the spot you'd prefer stay clean. We have what I call a Pee Rock in the corner of our front yard that attracts dogs peeing on it, which keeps them off the grass itself. Similarly, my neighbor has a log in her yard to keep them off all of her plantings. It can get gross but is a decent trade off.
posted by misskaz at 7:08 AM on July 25, 2021

The only thing that I've seen work, is one person in my neighbourhood had a tree that was showing a *lot* of damage from pee. (a 6" wide trunk was half eaten away by pee). They put up a sign near the tree, at the height where the damage was that said something like, "Hey, dog pee is killing me! Please stop peeing on me."

I made sure that our dogs stopped peeing there (and now I regularly watch, and don't let our dog(s) pee anywhere if the tree already has no bark in a pee-height area). I assume a lot of other people also did, because a few years later the bark had recovered (there's still a large divot/depression) and the sign's been removed for a few years now.
posted by nobeagle at 10:12 AM on July 26, 2021