A puppy starts to cock his legs anywhere between 6–12 months old. The behavior is more common in male puppies, but it’s not abnormal for females to do so as well.
It doesn’t matter whether you neutered your puppy or not. In both cases, your puppy may start to lift his hind leg as he urinates.
However, neutered dogs have more tendency to squat than cock their legs. It’s mostly about personal preference, but there’s often a little more to it.
Why Do Puppies Cock Their Legs?
Puppies cock their legs for a variety of reasons.
Comfortable Urination
It’s more comfortable for a puppy to raise a leg while urinating. It gives the puppy more freedom and allows him to quickly and easily relieve himself.
Leg cocking also prevents the puppy from squatting and feeling susceptible. Dogs feel most vulnerable when they squat to do their business.
You may have noticed that your squatting puppy constantly stares at you while relieving himself. That’s because of the vulnerability. He’s looking at you for comfort.
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Clean Urination
Leg cooking allows your puppy to pee as far away from its body as possible. That prevents the urine splatter from landing on your puppy’s body.
On the other hand, squatting has a much higher chance of splattering urine all over your puppy’s rear.
If your puppy urinates in the squatting position, it would be best to clean his read whenever you see him use the bathroom.
Marking Territories
Just like cats, male dogs use their urine to mark territories. Dogs, in particular, mark territories for two main reasons:
To Attract Female Dogs
Dogs will try to mark territories if there’s a female dog in heat nearby. That urine would let the female know that there’s a male dog in the area that she could mate with.
To Establish Dominance Over Other Male Dogs
Territory marking is body language between dogs to show which dog is the more dominant.
Leg cocking doesn’t only allow the dog to aim further but also higher. So the higher the mark is, the bigger the dog is.
When a dog sees a urine mark that’s higher than his, he recognizes that there’s a more alpha dog in the neighborhood.
Establishing dominance is why leg cocking is more common in male puppies. Females don’t need to show that they’re dominant.
However, they may do so when they are in heat to attract other male dogs.
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Should I Stop My Puppy From Cocking His Leg?
You shouldn’t interfere with the leg cocking behavior of your puppy. It’s entirely natural and helps your puppy urinate more comfortably.
Additionally, leg cocking results in cleaner urination. As a result, you won’t need to clean your dog after every quick bathroom break.
The problem arises when your puppy starts cocking his leg at home and pees on anything vertical. Unfortunately, that includes your furniture and sometimes your legs!
You have three approaches to handle that situation:
- Train your puppy at home
- Take your puppy to a trainer
- Cage your puppy until it’s bathroom time
Training Your Puppy at Home
Before doing anything else, you should try to adjust your puppy’s behavior first. On most occasions, training puppies works best using the rewarding system.
You should have a group of words and a specific tone you use with your puppy when you’re happy with him.
Alternatively, your puppy should know when you’re angry when the happy tone disappears.
Whenever you notice that your puppy is about to cock his legs and urinate where he shouldn’t, take him outside quickly, point where you want him to urinate, then say: “do it.”
Pair that with rewarding your puppy using treats whenever he urinates in the right place, and your puppy will listen to you with time.
Hiring a Trainer
If you fail to train your puppy at home, you may need the help of a more experienced trainer.
The trainer doesn’t necessarily have to take your dog away for training. Instead, the solution may be as simple as a set of different instructions that you could use to control your puppy.
Use Your Yard if You Have One
Having a yard can be a great asset in eliminating your puppy’s bad bathroom habits. Allow us to explain.
With time, you should get a feel for when your puppy needs to relieve himself. Then, when that time comes, take your puppy to the yard and keep him from returning home.
At one point, he’ll have no choice but to urinate outside. When that happens, immediately give him your happy tone and a treat if possible.
Your dog will quickly understand that urinating outside is what he’s supposed to do.
What if My Puppy Leg Cocking Is Bothering Me?
At this point, we’re not talking about your puppy urinating at home. We’re talking about the excessive leg cocking behavior during your dog walk.
During the walk, your puppy may have the urge to mark every single possible territory. That is harmless to the puppy, but it can waste much of your time.
If that lost time is bothering you, you have two approaches to reduce that:
Use Short Leash
A short leash will prevent your dog from straying too far. But, typically, dog owners don’t like using short leashes because they restrict the freedom of their dogs.
That’s perfectly understandable, but if your dog cocks his leg too much while walking, you may need to use a short leash, at least for a while.
When you hold the short leash firmly, you’ll gently pull your dog away from unnecessary marking.
When your dog constantly fails to stray and mark, he’ll soon break the habit. You may return to your longer leash after that.
Walk Ahead of Your Dog
Most long-term dog owners know you must let your dog know who’s in control.
Walking behind your dog is fine as long as the dog doesn’t do anything that annoys you.
However, sometimes you should walk ahead of your dog to show him that you’re the one leading the walk, not the other way around.
Paul has been creating content for the dog niche for many years. The information he shares comes his first hand experience growing up in dog lovers household and then owning multiple dog breeds of his own as an adult. Paul enjoys doing the hard research to collect, analyze and present our dogtemperament.com readers with the best answers to their questions.