Expert: Christine (Chris) Vassonei, APDT - 7/4/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi.
I have a 1 year old Morkie who has been house trained.  After having him "altered" he didn't mark the house for about 4 months.  About 1 month ago, he started marking the family room and now don't know how to stop him.  I'm home all day and we leave the back door open so both our dogs can come and go at their leisure.  I'm back to using gates to keep our Morkie confined to only the family room since I'm afraid he will start to mark in other areas of the house.  At one point, he got out and marked the kitchen table.  UGH!  So...1.  Why is he doing this again (he did it prior to being "altered"?  and 2. How do I stop this behavior immediately?
PS  The family room doesn't have carpet and I've used pet store recommended solutions to clean the floor.
Thanks,
Tifnie

ANSWER: I'm not sure I will be able to answer your questions, but can you first give me a little more information about the other dog in the house?
Male or female?  Spayed/neutered?  Age?

And just to be sure I have the information correct, the Morkie was neutered at about 7 months old?

thanks,
Chris

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Oops, sorry.  We have a 9 year old female lab/pointer mix that has been "altered".  She does not have any urinary issues and is well established in house training.  

Almost.  We purchased him around Thanksgiving so he was already 4 months old.  We were told between 5-7 month to get him altered, but could go up to 1 year, and it was just after New Years that we did, so he just turned 6 months old.

Answer
Well, marking is a territorial action, so it's possible he's doing it to assert himself as the dominant dog in the house.

Or another thought is that he just isn't complete housebroken.

You may be using the proper solutions to clean the floor, but a dog's nose is so acute, he may still be smelling odors.

I would suggest reimplementing housebreaking techniques; I'm including some documents that might give you some suggestions or hints that you have not yet tried.

http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/crate-train.pdf
http://www.hsmo.org/m_obedience/behavior/dogcrate.html

http://www.marinhumanesociety.org/Behavior/Handouts/Housetraining.pdfhttp://www.  
http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/retrain-dog.pdf     

http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/pup-housetrain.pdf    

http://www.hsmo.org/m_obedience/documents/CanineHousesoilingProblems.pdf
http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/clean-stains.pdf