The new puppy we just got this past week is a shih tzu and he wont be a year old until the 23rd of this month. He is putting his mark in the bedroom. On the bed ruffle, the floor. My cat sometimes stays in the house and sometimes sleeps on the bed with us. Pooh wants to play with her so badly as we can tell. We think he played with his previous owners cat.

Could he be doing this from jealous cause of the cat or is this something normal? We had a dog in the house that had kidney damage and had trouble holding his pee and we had a young male cat a few months ago that had a accident in the bedroom when Pooh is marking. If this helps.

It could be marking-- dogs start entering puberty around 6 months of age-- in males, that includes raising the leg, and marking.

It could be the cat-- you say a cat accidentally pottied in the same room where the dog is now pottying. That could be a contributor.

But there are a couple more things to consider:

* Is Pooh really house trained, or is he weeing in the house because he thinks it is okay to do so? If that is a possibility, then it wouldn't really classify as "marking," per se, but simply going potty in house. Especially if he smells that someone else (the cat) also went potty in there.

* There is a possibility he could have a urinary tract infection-- you might want to bump up that one year vet check a few weeks, and get him in now, just to rule out anything medically wrong.