Yes, Susan, but those are rank ALL the time. INTACT male dog(living with other intact males) is rank only SOMETIMES. May be diet related, but it always seems to correspond (coincidentally???) with literal pissing contests.

For those who haven't noticed this, how many sexually mature intact males do you have at one time in the same area? I'm not into neutered animals, so I don't know what their urine does or doesn't smell like. I never noticed it when I only had one male. Now, with 4, I notice it a lot. Nothing diet-wise has changed. It's not the normal "I have to go to the bathroom, so I'm peeing" stuff. It's the "Dammit! I just marked this, and now I gotta do it again" stuff...

This has been my experience, and I do have a few friends who have noticed the same thing. In particular, there are two whose urine smell is not noticeable unless the foe is around; if that's the case, it's absolutely awful (simply my opinion, again. Someone else may liken it to roses on a Spring day.) These are two dogs who despise each other. Simply something I've noticed, and if someone else hasn't, that's fine. No one is forced to agree. I can handle it.

All this speculation seems a bit premature since the OP hasn't even responded yet to any of the questions we all initally asked.Katherine???

I was kidding, hence the reference to asparagus!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, I wasn't upset. Did I come off as upset? Sorry, if so. I was just stating what I'd noticed with healthy, intact, dominant dogs, and also that no one needs to agree with me. And asparagus is too expensive to feed dogs.

Not at all! I just didn't know if you knew I was joking.

The owner is coming over either tonight or tomorrow for a training session and we're going to discuss it then. It's really her call as this is not my dog to be making veterinary decisions for -- if he was mine I would be doing a urinalysis just to be safe. I have noticed that he drinks a LOT of water but he is also a lot bigger than my girl so I realize he needs more than she does just to function properly.

I've never owned an intact male so I don't know if it's 'normal' intact male urine, I just know it's RANK! An interesting thing, however, is that he still squats to pee. So I have trouble imagining that its a dominance-related thing when I have never seen him lift his leg once.

I'll update again when I've met with his owner.

Drinking a lot of water is reason for concern. Is he kibble-fed? Kibble-fed dogs drink considerably more than raw-fed. If he's not even lifting his leg yet, then you're probably right about it not being dominance/rank related. In the cases I'm referring to, the leg is lifted so high they're peeing almost straight up in the air . Be sure to mention it at training.