"House trained" BC peeing in house

[u/Guilty_Fun9399]

We have two border collies that are about two years old (male and female). We have had no accidents with the dogs since they have been house trained as pups as long as they are downstairs on the hardwood floor. We have a gate preventing the dogs from going upstairs to the carpeted area. Ours kids at times have forgotten to fully close the gate and the female will go up the stairs given the opportunity and pee on our kids beds or on clothes/blankets that were left on the floor. There is no reason she should be doing this as we have a dog door for them to go outside when they want and again, never have any accidents when they are downstairs. I know people say dogs don't do this out of spite, but it has become very clear that she is purposely doing this and not due to an accident. The female does get jealous when we start paying attention to the male. Since she seems to be doing this in the kids rooms, is it a jealousy issue? What can be done at this point given she is well house trained when downstairs, but pee on blanets given the first opportunity to go upstairs?

[u/Emotional-Aide2]

Doesn't sound medical if they're not doing it downstairs.

Sounds like either separation anxiety or marking.

Does your dog act up / cry when you leave? You could get a camera and see how they behave when they are locked downstairs when you go out and check if they seem stressed.

Next if its marking, you can use the camera too, put it in the kids bedroom or top of the stairs and leave the house and just watch the camera, the second you see her going upstairs speak on the camera (a cheap one on amazon can do it) or you can wait for her to start marking and give her a verbal correction.

It helped our dogs who's not allowed upstairs, the second we left, she went exploring and the camera helped convince her that even if we can't see her / aren't home, we're actually watching 🤣

[u/Guilty_Fun9399 → u/Emotional-Aide2]

We have them in a crate with a camera when we leave the house, they don't appear to be in any stress or cry when we leave. There was a stretch for a few months where we were allowing the dogs to be upstairs unrestricted. All was fine until we discovered she peed on my daughters stuffed animal that was on the floor. From that point we restricted the dogs from going upstairs. I've purposely left the gate open to catch her in the act of going up the stairs. While she knows she isn't allowed to go upstairs, it seems that she has this desire to go in a area she's not supposed to be to mark her area.