I am new to this and wanted to ask some questions. I am a vet tech that just saved a 2 year old male Rat Terrier. The family said it was fully housetrianed, good with kids and other dogs. I brought him home last night, he did lots of submissive peeing. He also had a couple accidents in the morning and here at my work today he has had several!!!! He has been outside once an hour. Also, we had him in a crate at my house when we let my other two bigger dogs out and the rat was growling etc at them. I am for one scared to introduce them now for fear of fighting, I am scared this dog is not housetrained even though I was told he was and I am scared of the submissive peeing. He seems very sweet. Could it just be that he is sensitive to a new enviroment? I can't have him peeing all over my new house. My husband will kill me. I work with animals daily but i wanted a small, older, loving, potty trained dog. any advice or ideas?

Did you have him checked for a UTI? 

I'm sure Nora will see this and respond.  I can tell you that we adopted a chi-rattie in March and was told he got along great with cats and other dogs.  Well, he loves to attack cats and is agressive with intact male dogs.  Point is, what a shelter or a previous owner tells you might not always be true....

When introducing a new dog to the dogs already in your home, it should be done on neutral ground.  He may have fear agression around your bigger dogs.  If your other dogs are not agressive then I'm sure you can work through that problem.  Why did the other family want to give him up?

Nora will see this and have advice plus you can do a search in the Training Forum for advice on this and the submissive urination/housetraining.

My last foster boy had a problem with submissive urination pretty bad when he first came to me. He was very nervous and scared of everything being new. It only lasted about a week, and then he wasn't having any problems with it.. until his new family came to meet him, and he went to visit at their house. Anything totally new seemed to get it started again, but fortunately Rex's new family was very understanding about the problem. They had recently lost a 15 yr. old toy poodle that had be incontinent for a long time... so said a little submissive urination at first wasn't going to bother them. 

You could try using a belly band on him for a few days, and see if that will help. If you don't have any belly bands you can make one using just an ace bandage, and place a ladies maxie pad (cut to fit) inside the bandage.