Curious Online User Wonders How Service Dog Owners Handle Their Dogs That Need To Potty While On The Bus

The quick answer: The service dog can wait.

May

• Published in Interesting
• May 7, 2024

Learning how to control their bathroom needs until the right time, and being able to go when asked, are crucial skills for any service dog to learn. It's important that these working canines never relieve themselves indoors since this could lead to them being asked to leave public places. 

With service dogs often having long workdays with multiple stops, knowing when and where to go potty is essential. While pets should only go outside on grass or at the park, service dogs need to be comfortable going in various locations like at home, in parking lot dividers, outside stores, or even on artificial grass in airports.

One of the foundational skills taught to service dogs early on is responding to a bathroom cue. Phrases such as "go potty," "go pee," "go poop," or hurry up" are just some suggested cues to signal to the dog that it's time to go potty.

This skill isn't just crucial for service dogs; it can also be very handy for family dogs. For instance, it's helpful during rainy days when you don't want to wait outside for your dog to decide to go. 

During car trips when you stop at rest stops, and whenever you need to communicate to your dog that time is limited and it's best to go potty now if needed.

Over at Quora, a user asks a question about a service dog's potty practices, particularly if they're still on a bus. This is their question:

What do people with service dogs do if they are on a bus (or similar situation, where they can't easily leave) and the dog needs to potty?

Adult service dogs are good at holding their poop and pee in.

In most cases, the dog will wait. Adult dogs can normally hold their water for very long times.

When our first dog was 4 months old we were invited to a wedding in Jerusalem. We walked him before we left in mid afternoon, and hoped we’d get a ride home aftèrwards.

The ride didn’t pan out, and we stayed overnight in Jerusalem.

We took an early bus home, amd arrived at midday. I turned to my husbamd and said “ I expect we’ll find a mess in the house.

It’s been too long.” When we opened the door the poor dog was dancing with need.

He had waited the whole time.

Zev took him out immediately and he waited until he got to a suitable place before he relieved himself.

I searched the apartment and found nothing. He had waited. There were no puddles or piles in the apartment.

They are taught to potty on command.

Image: Leif my black Labrador Guide Dog, looks up into the camera.

I have worked with Leif, my black Labrador guide dog for over ten years now.

Believe it or not there is a very simple solution to this problem speaking in terms of guide dogs used by blind handlers.

From a young age, the puppies and the dogs are trained to relieve on command. They may take a minute or three actually settling down to relieve, but before we get on a bus or enter a building, we find a convenient place to relieve our dogs and give the command “Business”.

The dog then goes about doing whatever it needs to do. If we need to we clean up after the dog.

So since the dog has or should have been relieved before one gets on a bus or goes to a place where it might be difficult to allow it to relieve it can be three or four hours for a medium to large dog to be desperate to go.

On a longer journey, there might be bathroom breaks for the humans on board a bus. These might be fifteen or twenty minutes or so every couple of hours. The handler should take all such opportunities to relieve their dog at such stops.

Of course there may be absolute emergencies. The dog may have an upset stomach. Sometimes on can hear such conditions, if I can hear Leif’s belly grumbling for any reason and suspect a stomach upset. He will be staying at home and I use my long white cane for a day or two.

But in the case where that emergency does happen. I sit close enough to the bus driver to be able to ask if they can make an emergency stop, because I think my dog is having a stomach problem. Most bus drivers I have found very happy o allow a guide dog handler to exit the bus very quickly in order to not face a mighty problem of having to clean up a pile of dog mess back at the garage.

That happened only once to Leif and I, and some of the other passengers took that unplanned break to pop into a nearby orange grove and avail themselves of some windfalls.

It's also the owner's responsibility to find opportunities for potty breaks.

Most dogs can go a minimum of four hours between elimination, so it would be unlikely they would need to go before deboarding. Anyone owning a dog and especially someone with a service dog would use proper opportunities for those breaks.

The ones will potty issues are mostly the very young canines and the old ones.

Unlike us people who can’t wait one second past the urge to go, (jk), dogs can wait awhile if there is a need to wait. Service dogs are well trained adult dogs.

My two dogs, both of whom are 7 years old never have accidents in the house. If i know I’m leaving, I take them out right before I leave.

In my experience, the little dogs are the most difficult to get completely and 100% accident free. It’s the very young and old dogs that have the potty urgency issues

Dogs are able to hold for long periods. Service dogs are especially trained when to relieve themselves.

Real service dogs are trained to go at certain times when it is suitable to do so. At the office building where I worked we had an area just outside in the garden which was arranged for this, with a drain and a hard paved area that was easy to clean, and which was cleaned and hosed down by the company every day, and the owners took their dogs (mainly guide dogs) out at set times to a routine.

Dogs can go for long periods without needing to relieve themselves and they were trained to do so. A service dog will wait until the journey is over.

How often the dog goes potty would depend on their owner. Generally, these working canines can potty twice a day.

The owner can even create a schedule and the dog will eventually learn it. In the end, it's really up to what's best for the owner and their service dog.

May