Soiling indoors when left, medical causes first

What this tends to look like

• Was reliably clean and is now not
• Urine or stool found on return, sometimes near the door, sometimes anywhere
• May be straining, going more often, or producing small puddles
• Sometimes loose stool rather than a normal formed motion
• Not obviously distressed in other ways, or only mildly so
• Often an older dog, or one on new medication

What is usually going on

House-soiling when left alone gets filed as separation anxiety more often than it should be. There is a long list of physical causes that produce exactly this and nothing else: a urinary tract infection, bladder stones, early kidney disease, diabetes, incontinence in a spayed female, colitis, parasites, or simply a diuretic or steroid the dog has recently started taking. In an older dog, cognitive change also causes loss of house-training without any anxiety at all.

The reason we route you here rather than to a calming remedy is that these are cheap to rule out and expensive to miss. A urine sample and a brief examination settle most of it. If everything comes back clear, then a behavioral explanation becomes reasonable and the other patterns on this page apply. Doing it in that order costs you one appointment. Doing it the other way round can cost months, and in the case of a urinary obstruction or untreated diabetes, considerably more than that.

What people commonly use

Educational information only — not veterinary advice. Check with your vet before starting anything new.

Where to find them

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What you can do at home

• Collect a urine sample before the appointment if you can. Morning, midstream, into anything clean
• Note whether it is urine, stool or both, roughly how much, and where in the house
• Note any change in how much they are drinking, which is a genuinely important clue
• List any new medications, including flea and worm treatments
• Never punish or scold soiling. It teaches concealment and it makes anxious dogs worse
• Clean with an enzymatic cleaner rather than anything ammonia-based, which smells like urine to a dog

What progress should look like

How long to give this before you conclude it is not working.

• This weekGet the urine sample and the appointment. This is the whole recommendation.
• At the visitAsk specifically about incontinence and about cognitive change if the dog is over about eight.
• If tests are clearThen the behavioral patterns below become the right place to look, and you can treat with confidence.

When to stop and call your vet

• Straining to urinate, or producing only drops, which is urgent
• Drinking noticeably more than usual, which needs blood and urine tests
• Blood in the urine or stool
• An older dog who also seems confused, restless at night, or lost in familiar rooms