Husky Peeing In The House: (Behavior Solved)

It’s a common, frustrating problem, even for adult huskies!

If your husky keeps peeing indoors, it could be because of their age, not enough training, stress, a change in their routine, or health issues.

I’ll break it down for you and give you the best ways to fix it fast. 🐕🏡

4 Reasons Why Your Husky Keeps Peeing Inside The House

1. Age & lack of training
2. Stress & anxiety
3. Change of routine
4. Health problems

Lots of reasons why your husky might pee inside. With a puppy, it’s often because they’re not fully potty trained yet. For adults or seniors, it could be illness, stress, a change in routine, environment, or diet.

Before I run through each of these in further detail it’s crucial to first rule out health issues. Before trying to correct this behavior and practice training routines, it’s essential that your husky is in good health. For puppies, it’s likely due to a lack of potty training, but for adult huskies and seniors, a check-up with your veterinarian is worth it.

1. Age & Lack of Training

Husky Puppies: (lack of potty training)
If you have a husky under the age of 1, he’s still in that wild puppy stage. Puppies need to be potty trained from the first day home.

It’s critical to start implementing a routine to form good habits. If any puppy (breed doesn’t matter) starts peeing in the house too often, this could very quickly become a habit, and habits are rather hard to unlearn.

If you have a husky puppy that’s peeing in the house, you may need to rethink your current potty training routine. Fortunately, I have an entire husky puppy potty training article here.

Puppies are still learning to control their bladder. Even if you’re doing the potty training right, if you don’t let them out often enough, they might still have accidents inside. Our potty training article covers this too!

Adult Huskies.

Adult huskies should have received some previous potty training, but this isn’t always the case. If you’ve just rescued an adult husky, that’s amazing, although you will need to run through basic potty training once again.

For adults huskies that should know better, it’s likely caused by one of the other following issues outlined in this section.

Senior Huskies.

Just like with us, old age affects dogs in many ways. As dogs get older their ability to control their bladder gets worse and this can lead to some unfortunate defecation.

With old age, also comes some other health issues, so an underlying, or developing health issue may be at play. It’s best to have regular vet check-ups once your husky reaches his later years.

2. Stress & Anxiety

Stress and anxiety can happen with dogs just like it can with us, and it has many negative impacts on the body. Huskies, in particular, can develop stress and anxiety issues fairly easily compared to other breeds.

It helps to ask yourself questions like: Is your husky receiving enough daily exercise? are you spending enough quality time with him? Perhaps you’ve changed work schedule and your husky spends most of the time alone?

A lack of exercise both physical and mental, boredom, and being left alone are all big contributors to stress and anxiety issues. An anxious husky will definitely resort to unwanted behavior (most of the time destructive behavior) but peeing in the house could certainly be another result.

3. Change of Routine

When your husky is thrown off his usual routine it can disrupt many things, including his appetite, sleep, mood and his normal potty times.

Your husky’s routine is based on your routine, so have you suddenly started coming home from work 20 minutes later than usual? maybe you no longer need to go in to work so early, so you stay in bed for an extra 30 minutes? Anything simple like this could be the issue.

Once your husky becomes used to being let out for a pee at 7am when you usually wake up, 1:30 when you come home for lunch, or 5pm when back from work. The moment this changes, your husky might not be able to control it.

4. Health Problems

If you think none of the above reasons could apply to your husky, then he may have some underlying health concerns. It’s vital to think about your husky’s general health and well-being and visit a veterinarian if you suspect something is wrong.

Sometimes, health issues like Urinary Tract Infections can cause dogs to pee inside the house. This is actually one of the most common health issues in all dogs today. Aside from UTI’s, there’s still a vast range of other issues that could result in some pee on your floors.

Before worrying too much about correcting the behavior, it’s important you see to it that your husky is in good health. If you are unsure, contact your veterinarian.

Ways To Stop Your Husky Peeing In The House

You may have read some of the typical causes outlined above and now have a pretty good idea as to why your husky keeps peeing in the house, in which case, you’ll know what to adjust.

But if you still aren’t sure, it’s time to put into practice some routines and develop good habits. Let’s run through some ways that will help you stop your husky from peeing in the house

1) Night and morning routines

If you come down in the morning and there’s already pee on the floor, try setting your alarm for 30 minutes earlier to let him out before he makes that mistake. On top of that, ensure you take him outside to pee right before everyone goes to bed.

And finally, remove his water bowl throughout the night. Your husky is more than capable of going throughout the night without taking a sip of water, he probably already isn’t drinking throughout the night, but it’s an extra step to be safe.

2) Increase the number of times you let him out in the yard

Aside from getting good morning and nighttime routines, try to let him out during the day more often, and make a habit of it. If one day you let him out in the yard 15 times, then the next day you forget and only let him out 3 times, you’re asking for potty mistakes.

If you work long hours and he’s left alone, you’ll need to try and have someone come round to your house to let him out for potty breaks and some playtime.

A husky can’t be expected to be cooped up inside all day, these are the athletes of the dog world and need to be outside and exercising as much as possible. Not only could being left alone cause anxiety which may then increase potty mistakes, but it may just be too much for his bladder.

3) Reward him when he pees outside

Although this is part of potty training in general, it’s a powerful technique so I thought it should be given extra attention. Rewarding him with praise and a tasty treat every time he pees outside.

Positive reinforcement and association are critical parts of learning and it won’t be long before your husky makes the link between using your yard for his potty breaks and being a “good boy” compared to when he pees indoors and he doesn’t get anything positive from you.

4) Implement potty training

Of course, going through a solid potty training routine is something else that can be done. I won’t go into complete detail here about the routine, as I have a complete potty training article that explains the method in full detail.

In essence, you’ll need to create a designated spot in your yard for potty training. After this, you’ll need to take your husky there during key moments of the day, once you are there, you will only use a single chosen command like “potty time” to help start building an association between that phrase and doing his business.

After he eliminates in that spot, heavy praise and reward must be given. It goes without saying, not all attempts will be successful, and sometimes you may just miss it! But if you work on this enough, you’ll be surprised just how quickly you can turn this into a solid habit. If you aren’t familiar with potty training, I strongly suggest checking out the article I have on it. It covers everything.

5) Ensure your husky receives adequate exercise

When it comes to Siberian huskies, exercise is almost like a magical cure for most issues, especially ones that are behavior related.

Ensuring your husky is receiving at least 2 hours of high-intensity exercise per day is a good start. Not only does this mean he’s spending a good amount of time outside, but this level of exercise will keep him happy, content and for the most part, anxiety-free.

While there still can be other factors at play, exercise is an important part of a healthy daily routine. This all goes towards a husky who doesn’t make potty mistakes.

6) Never reprimand your husky for potty mistakes

Reprimanding shouldn’t be needed for any reason, but especially for this. Unfortunately, MANY owners still to this day, shout and even hit their dogs. This does not teach them what’s right and wrong. It only teaches fear.

Reprimanding doesn’t effectively resolve the initial cause of the potty mistake, therefore it will never really work. It will just cause a negative relationship between you and your dog.

Remember that reprimanding is simply a reaction. It doesn’t achieve anything of actual value, and if it does achieve anything, it’s only based on negativity and fear, which eventually leads to an unstable dog.

Why Potty Pads Are a Bad Idea!

Usually, owners who are suffering from frequent potty mistakes, come to the conclusion that they should get a potty pad, so their dog “can just go there instead” I understand this thought process but let me explain why potty pads should be avoided as much as possible.

• Note: If you live in an apartment and you do not have a front or back yard, then a potty pad will be unavoidable. But for everyone that has a yard, read this section.

Potty pads just reinforce a bad habit, that’s waiting to go wrong. It’s vital that your husky understands that eliminating inside the house is NOT acceptable by you.

Pee’s and Poops go outside, in the yard, at all times! Once this becomes a solid understanding, you will rarely have potty mistakes ever again, unless for a very good and fair reason.

However, by getting a potty pad, you’re setting your husky up to eventually fail, in different ways. One day, your husky will not understand the difference between the potty pad, and your rug, or a towel that fell on to the floor.

Your husky is also thinking, well, it’s ok for me to poop inside the house, right? And there it is, future potty mistakes will still happen!

To truly avoid potty mistakes inside the house, a dog must understand that anywhere inside the house is wrong.

Key Points to Think About

I’ll run through some of the key points made within this article as a way of summarizing the most important points to think about: If you consider all of these points, you should have a good understanding of why potty mistakes are happening, and how you can stop it

• Is your husky still a puppy? If so, maybe he just isn’t as well potty trained as you first thought. Take a look at this potty training article as a refresher.
  
• Husky puppies have small bladders which they don’t yet know how to control. Husky puppies need to be let out frequently!
  
• Has your routine changed? do you wake up later than usual or come home at a different time? Think about your husky’s usual potty times and when he used to be let out.
  
• Ensure your husky has no underlying health issues. UTI’s are extremely common in all dogs.
  
• If your husky is reaching old age, health issues become common and they also lose control of their bladder.
  
• How is your husky acting, is he happy? does he show signs of anxiety or further stress? Is he destructive? Anxiety can be a common reason for potty mistakes.
  
• It may be as simple as your husky isn’t outside in the yard enough. Huskies love the outdoors and should never be kept cooped up inside. It’s also important that your husky is receiving about 2 hours of intensive exercise per day.
  
• Try to start forming a good habit and frequently take your husky out to a designated potty spot, as many times throughout the day as you can. Especially after moments like sleeping, playing, eating, training, napping, drinking, pretty much anything of significance, take your husky outside.
  
• Reward him when he pees in the correct place, outside!
  
• Never reprimand him for making potty mistakes. It doesn’t solve anything, and will only contribute to further issues down the line.

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Summary

I hope by now you have a better understanding of why your husky keeps peeing inside the house and how you can stop it!

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