Episode 46 - Why Puppies Pee In The House Even When They've Just Been Outside

4/28/2026

The question comes from the discussion group for our With Open Arms puppy owner course:

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Hello! Our 15-week-old puppy is presenting some potty training challenges…While he's reliably house-trained for bowel movements, he frequently urinates on rugs, likely because they resemble the puppy pads he's familiar with. More puzzling that even when we take him outside at the recommended intervals, he'll pass small amounts of urine and then refuse to empty his bladder fully, even after 10+ minutes. Inevitably, within 20 minutes of coming back inside, he'll urinate on a rug.

He's very able to stay in his kennel for a full 2 hour nap with no anxiety or accidents. So he certainly is physically capable of holding his bladder.

We are not sure what we are doing wrong or if this is just to be expected and to be patient. It does seem like he thinks that the rug is the place to pee. Let me know if you have any tips!

This podcast covers:

Why being able to take a two hour nap without peeing does not mean a puppy can hold it for two hours while awake
Why “double and triple peeing” is really a developmental thing
The physical reasons puppies may target fabric to relieve themselves

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

Transcript - Episode 46

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist., and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This episode's question is from our discussion group for our puppy course, and it's about house training. I'm just going to read the question because it folds in a lot of interesting topics.

Hello. Our 15 week old puppy is presenting some potty training challenges. The breeder started him on puppy pads. We've transitioned him to a litter box and are following the Puppy Culture training protocol.

However, we've encountered a persistent issue while he's reliably house trained for bowel movements, he frequently urinates on rugs, likely because they resemble the puppy pads he's familiar with. More puzzling than that even, when we take him outside at the recommended intervals, he'll pass small amounts of urine and then refuse to empty his bladder fully, even after ten minutes or more.

Inevitably, within 20 minutes of coming back inside, he'll urinate on a rug. This pattern repeats daily. We are not sure what we're doing wrong, or if this is just to be expected and to be patient. It does seem like he thinks that rugs is the place to pee. Let me know if you have any tips.

Okay. Me again. First of all, the double peeing is totally a thing and we do cover it in the course. And I did tell her to go back and listen to that section again. But let me just say, this is a very classic pattern where puppies get control of their bowels first, because remember, she said he seems to be able to hold his poop, but not in his pee.

But then they go through this phase where they'll pee outside and then come inside and pee right away, again. Now, you know, they'll always say, rule out the physical first and for sure, if this is a puppy that has been not double peeing, in other words, has been relieving himself outside and then coming in and not peeing again in 20 minutes, and all of a sudden he's coming inside and peeing a little bit frequently every ten 15 minutes, you know, that is probably a UTI. And you do want to check that box off and get a, you know, a urine sample in for a urinary tract infection. And I'd be leaning more that way, as I say, if it was a regression.

But this, I confirmed it with the student, was not a regression. This is just the way that this puppy is. The puppies never really been able to fully relieve himself outside and then go for a long time inside without urinating. But then the student wrote in, in response to my advice, and this is what she said.

Thanks for this info. I will be sure to ask about UTIs at his next visit. There is some additional info that to me makes it seem less likely to be a UTI, ie. We've been doing the puppy kegels for a few weeks now, and he's very able to stay in his kennel for a full two hour nap with no anxiety or accidents.

Okay, so me again. First of all, puppy Kegels is a phase in our house training system where you're starting to challenge the puppy slightly as far as holding it. I'm not going to go into the whole thing. It's in the course. But the point is, in this student's mind, the fact that her puppy could sleep for two hours in a crate without needing to pee equals he should be able to be loose in the house for two hours without needing to pee, which is not at all true.

Holding your bladder or your puppy's bladder while you sleep is completely different than holding your bladder or your puppy's bladder while you're active. When we or our puppies sleep, our bodies produce increased levels of antidiuretic hormone, which greatly reduces urine output. So if you think about how many times a day you need to pee during an eight hour work day, when you go into that office, how many times do you go and pee? A lot.

I would venture to guess more than once or twice. I would venture to guess, it's a lot of times. Yet most of us sleep through the night without peeing or we pee only once. This is why your puppy has to pee more frequently during the day. And this is also why your puppy pees when he comes back in the house and he's excited.

The fun and excitement of being inside, especially if playing produces adrenaline which sensitizes the bladder. So it's not only a question of the production of urine not being suppressed, the bladder is actually activated. So it's a very long way of saying that it's normal for a puppy to hold it while sleeping, yet legitimately still pee in the house.

Just as an aside, some people don't produce a lot of that antidiuretic hormone, and they need to get up many times a night to pee. But normally most people won't need to get up at all. Or maybe once they'll get up. Yet another aside, as you and your dog age, you often will produce less of that antidiuretic hormone at night, which is why older people and dogs often need to go more frequently.

But the main point here is that sleeping in a crate is a biological context that is very, very different from being awake and active. And it's completely normal for a 15 week old puppy to pee outside and then come inside and pee again within a few minutes, especially if he's playing or excited. Those states of emotional arousal stimulate the bladder and urine production, and make it harder for the puppy to hold it.

I'm going to put aside specific advice for house training because that's what the course is about. But I want to reassure any puppy owner listening to this that for a 15 week old puppy, double pees are normal. A puppy's ability to hold urine depends on the context, and you can't set the bar for how long a puppy can hold urine, by how long he can nap without needing to get up and pee.

Now, the thing that I did not talk about yet is the peeing on the fabric. And that really is a thing. And it can be a thing for two reasons. The first, and more universal reason is that puppies naturally don't want urine splashing on their feet, so they won't like peeing on hard surfaces like floors where the urine could either splash on their feet or roll on their feet.

So they're going to seek out things that are soft that will absorb that urine. Also. And we point this out in the puppy course, they'll often look for deeper substrates. So when they're outside, they're going to want to go into a little bit of a deeper grass. And when they're inside, they might want to go into something like a crumpled blanket or something that has a little depth to it. That seems to stimulate the urination.

It's a trick if you're walking your puppy and he won't pee. Try getting him into a little higher grass. Just having that tickling feeling on his abdomen often will stimulate him to pee. We have a whole area in front of the house that has pachysandra, and whenever I have to take my puppies to go out some place, like into the car, I'll always take them to the pachysandra to pee first.

It becomes almost a conditioned emotional response for them. To the point where my adult dogs that I'm taking to go in the car, I just take them over to that pee patch where the pachysandra is, and they immediately pee. Now, the other thing about the fabric that can be a problem is if the breeder has used fabric pee pads for too long. We use fabric pee-pads in the whelping box.

And then when we transition our puppies to the weaning pen, we start by lining the weaning pen with those fabric pads. But we fade them very quickly because if you leave them down too long and the puppies get used to peeing on fabric, they can wind up targeting fabric to pee on. And you don't want that. I mean, it's a handy thing to have them understand those pee pads again as they get older and incontinent.

Or if you ever have to leave them for a space of time and you just want to put down a pad for them to pee on, it is a handy thing to have in your back pocket. But as a breeder, you do want to fade them quickly because otherwise you can wind up having a puppy that looks for things like quilts to pee on, which is not helpful for the puppy owner.

There was one final thing that the puppy owner brought up that she thought her puppy was only marking outside and not peeing because he would pee a little bit outside and lift a leg actually, at 15 weeks old, sometimes. I can't say I haven't seen the behavior with the puppy. I think 15 weeks is very early for a puppy to be lifting their leg, but it's not unheard of.

However, I think if the puppy's not relieving himself fully, it has more to do with being super excited being outside. Ten minutes may seem like a long time to you, when it's cold outside and you're waiting and trying to get that puppy to pee, but you know, a lot of puppies are just too distracted to really eliminate when they're outside fully.

So again, that can contribute to that double peeing, peeing a little outside and then peeing again inside. And like I said, there is the physiological thing of it takes a while for that wiring to happen where they really can fully evacuate their bladder. I will say that when I'm taking a puppy someplace that I anticipate is going to be an exciting event, like class, you know, I'm going to try and get them to pee before they go in, but I'm going to expect they're not going to pee before they go in, they’re too excited. They just want to get in the building.

But I am also going to expect that within 5 to 10 minutes of being in that building that need to urinate is going to overtake them. So, when I'm taking a puppy to a class, I will try and get them to pee outside, bring them in the building for 5 or 10 minutes, bring them outside again nine times out of ten that second trip outside is when the puppy's going to pee. And if it doesn't happen the second trip, I will try it again in 5 to 10 minutes. You know, this is really what we teach in our puppy training course is that you kind of have to roll with the punches. This is why we say always give your puppy access to a good option.

This is why we use a litter box to an age when a lot of people would say, oh, you know, this puppy could be house trained. He doesn't need a litter box, but we never want our puppies to be put in a position where they don't have a good option and yes, theoretically, you could cover all the bases with a 15 week old puppy and do all the right things and make sure that they stay out long enough that they pee, or you bring them in and then bring them out again.

And, you know, you could cover all these bases if you are watching the puppy constantly. But really, how miserable is that? And how likely are you to succeed? So my ultimate advice to this puppy owner, or to anyone who's experiencing something similar, is that; A. Double pees where the puppy goes outside and pees and comes back inside and pees right away again, are developmentally normal.

B. A puppy's ability to hold urine depends on the context. C. You cannot set the bar for how long a puppy can hold urine, by how long he can nap in his crate without needing to pee because it's a different biological context. And, D. Because there is this legitimate developmental period where the puppy is in a state of flux, where sometimes he can hold it and sometimes he can't.

Sometimes he's going to be able to go outside and fully evacuate his bladder, and sometimes he's not going to be able to, and he's going to come and pee in the house right away again, because sometimes they're puppies and it's cold and they don't want to go outside. It's dark and they're scared and they don't want to go outside.

It's raining, it's windy, and you don't want to stand outside. Because of all this, you need an indoor potty area for this puppy, so he always has a good choice until he just matures out of this period, which he will. He will mature past this developmental period. If you just don't push too hard on the intensive phase and ruin it, because once you push the puppy to the point where he gets in the habit of peeing inside, now you have a real problem.

Right now you don't have a problem. You have a puppy, legitimately, that is in a developmental phase that you can deal with. If you don't give the puppy a good option inside and he continues to pee inside - now you have an adult dog that has a habit of peeing inside. So again, it's counterintuitive for people. They think they're winning if they can get rid of the potty area faster.

But hand to my heart, trust me, I've done it scores of times. Keep the potty area until the puppy is reliably going outside. He will potty train himself.

If you liked this podcast, you'll love our puppy course, With Open Arms and a Level Head: How to Welcome a Puppy into Your Life. Available at puppyculture.com. And while you're there, check out our bundles.

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Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.