Marking Your Territory

Our dear friends Fred and Donna got their first family dog last December. She is a beautiful Golden Retriever named Bailey and we went over to see her as soon as she was settled in. We had a great time playing with her and getting our "puppy fix" and then went home to take our dogs for a walk. Nigel and Divot gave us a good sniffing over complete with suspicious looks like, "where have you been and who is this I smell?" At this point I must make sure that you understand that Nigel is very bonded to Mike and Divot is very bonded to me. Each one tolerates the other dog getting attention but will push his or her way in if their chosen parent is paying too much attention to the "other" dog. So, we got a good once over from them and then took them out for a walk. We stopped off to talk to our neighbor Lou, and Nigel continued to sniff Mike very intensely. Lou was telling us about his son's upcoming wedding and he suddenly looked down and said to Mike, "Hey Mike, your dog's peeing on you." We looked down and there was Nigel, leg lifted, marking his territory! We were quite shocked and there was a moment where we didn't quite know what to make of it. Lou looked surprised and dumbfounded, but we were laughing hysterically. We tried to continue our conversation out of respect for Lou but I kept looking down at Nigel because he continued to sniff Mike and I wasn't sure if he was done. As I glanced down again, you guessed it -- he did it again! At that point we had to get home, get Mike's jeans in the washer and him in the shower. Nigel would not stand for him "cheating" on him like that! I don't know exactly why he did that; we've been around other dogs plenty of times and he had never done that before and he's never done it again. There was just something about the scent of that puppy that drove him over the edge. He didn't even try to mark in our house when we brought Divot home so I don't know what got into him that day. Thankfully we both have a good sense of humor and we love our dogs enough to forgive their fits of jealousy.