Dog spots

[Hammbone81]

Every spring my lawn suffers from the aftermath of two English Springer Spaniels doing their business all winter long.
Having had almost 2ft of snow melt in the last week or so, I went out and picked up yard bombs that were pretty evenly distributed. But the Springers like to urinate right off the edge of the patio in the same spot every time. The lawn seems to recover, but it takes ALL SEASON just to happen again next year.



What do folks here do about this?

These 2 options are off the table:
1) getting rid of the dogs.
2) putting stuff in their drinking water (tried it, they stop drinking it)

[fastboat]

Nutro Vet Grass Guard
I Get it on Amazon. I don’t give my dog a full dose and it still works. I think the bottle says for her weight give up to 3or 4 pills but I do 2. I don’t do it in the winter just starting it up again this week for the season.

[MorpheusPA]

Neither. Two dogs here as well, but no spots at all, except sometimes in July when it's really hot.

The counter to heavy nitrogen spots is huge amounts of carbon. It's indirect, but bacteria love nitrogen (it's about 1/9th of their structure as compared to carbon), so if you have both C and N, you'll get tons of urea-processing bacteria that bind that urea right up and hang around, waiting for more. Release to the soil slows to a trickle (pardon the pun).

So feed organically as the season starts (cracked corn or corn meal is great for this as it's a heavy-hitter in terms of organics with very little nitrogen) through the area where the dogs go. It'll take about a year, perhaps two, for everything to adjust completely, but at 10-20 pounds per thousand square feet per month, things will start to improve immediately.

For even more benefit, sugar is an even faster carbon source. Sprinkle a generous handful across the area before rainfall. It'll light off a bacterial explosion that will help.

[edslawn]

Neither. Two dogs here as well, but no spots at all, except sometimes in July when it's really hot.

The counter to heavy nitrogen spots is huge amounts of carbon. It's indirect, but bacteria love nitrogen (it's about 1/9th of their structure as compared to carbon), so if you have both C and N, you'll get tons of urea-processing bacteria that bind that urea right up and hang around, waiting for more. Release to the soil slows to a trickle (pardon the pun).

So feed organically as the season starts (cracked corn or corn meal is great for this as it's a heavy-hitter in terms of organics with very little nitrogen) through the area where the dogs go. It'll take about a year, perhaps two, for everything to adjust completely, but at 10-20 pounds per thousand square feet per month, things will start to improve immediately.

For even more benefit, sugar is an even faster carbon source. Sprinkle a generous handful across the area before rainfall. It'll light off a bacterial explosion that will help.

Three dogs here... I also noticed that as I ramped up OM that the spots decreased overall in my lawn. I seem to recall a post where you mentioned that N binds with the OM, so I took that to mean lots of OM helps too. Is this also true and is there a negative side effect of the lawn not getting N at some point?

[MorpheusPA]

Three dogs here... I also noticed that as I ramped up OM that the spots decreased overall in my lawn. I seem to recall a post where you mentioned that N binds with the OM, so I took that to mean lots of OM helps too. Is this also true and is there a negative side effect of the lawn not getting N at some point?

Please understand that I'm so oversimplifying things here it's almost ridiculous, and it's something I'm doing just to keep from writing pages. N doesn't bind directly with OM, there's a whole chain of biological processes going on that mostly involve bacteria. Enough said.

Lots of OM does help because it decays over time and releases its nitrogen, leaving behind tons of carbon. There's never a down-side to OM, really--it just stops releasing N it no longer has. Bacteria go into stasis, spore up and wait for better days, are hunted by bacteriophages, eaten by worms and digested, or otherwise die. Fungal decay dominates instead (releasing less N and concentrating more on higher-carbon things). N release drops to a trickle.

It's like you just stopped feeding the lawn because...well, you just stopped feeding the lawn. It'll improve again if you start up with the organic matter at some point, but certainly won't look worse than it would have otherwise if you'd never fed in the first place.

[edslawn]

Three dogs here... I also noticed that as I ramped up OM that the spots decreased overall in my lawn. I seem to recall a post where you mentioned that N binds with the OM, so I took that to mean lots of OM helps too. Is this also true and is there a negative side effect of the lawn not getting N at some point?

Please understand that I'm so oversimplifying things here it's almost ridiculous, and it's something I'm doing just to keep from writing pages. N doesn't bind directly with OM, there's a whole chain of biological processes going on that mostly involve bacteria. Enough said.

Lots of OM does help because it decays over time and releases its nitrogen, leaving behind tons of carbon. There's never a down-side to OM, really--it just stops releasing N it no longer has. Bacteria go into stasis, spore up and wait for better days, are hunted by bacteriophages, eaten by worms and digested, or otherwise die. Fungal decay dominates instead (releasing less N and concentrating more on higher-carbon things). N release drops to a trickle.

It's like you just stopped feeding the lawn because...well, you just stopped feeding the lawn. It'll improve again if you start up with the organic matter at some point, but certainly won't look worse than it would have otherwise if you'd never fed in the first place.

Simple is good. Thanks Morph!

[Hammbone81]

Neither. Two dogs here as well, but no spots at all, except sometimes in July when it's really hot.

The counter to heavy nitrogen spots is huge amounts of carbon. It's indirect, but bacteria love nitrogen (it's about 1/9th of their structure as compared to carbon), so if you have both C and N, you'll get tons of urea-processing bacteria that bind that urea right up and hang around, waiting for more. Release to the soil slows to a trickle (pardon the pun).

So feed organically as the season starts (cracked corn or corn meal is great for this as it's a heavy-hitter in terms of organics with very little nitrogen) through the area where the dogs go. It'll take about a year, perhaps two, for everything to adjust completely, but at 10-20 pounds per thousand square feet per month, things will start to improve immediately.

For even more benefit, sugar is an even faster carbon source. Sprinkle a generous handful across the area before rainfall. It'll light off a bacterial explosion that will help.

There's a feed mill 5 blocks from my house. I'll pick up some cracked corn.

But speaking of carbon - what are your thoughts on Lesco's CarbonPro-G? Is it a good "carbon source" or is more analogous to The Andersons Humic DG? (which I started using last fall)

[MorpheusPA]

There's a feed mill 5 blocks from my house. I'll pick up some cracked corn.

Let me tell you about the year I applied 40 pounds per thousand per month all growing season long, along with importing leaves, my normal soy feeding, and every other organic I could get my hands on in an effort to see if I could overdo it. It worked out to 1,300 pounds of organics per thousand that year.
I think the lawn glowed in the dark.

[MorpheusPA]

I had to answer this separately, the site was not happy with something about it--Regarding Lesco's CarbonPro-G


I think I need more information on this stuff than is really available. It looks like simple biochar (carbon) and humic acid. This undefined Microbial Metabolites is the stuff where we don't have any good information here. These can range from simple things like carbon dioxide and water to very complex items like soil-deposited enzymes that your microbes do all the time (like urease, which is invaluable, but your soil is already chock-full of anyway).

So this could be anything from marketing hype to something that's actually useful. Quite bluntly, I'm betting on the former simply due to past experience with plenty of companies and plenty of people.

(Sidenote... The world is fortunate I'm honest because the gardening and other myths that people believe without critical thinking and consideration is absolutely unreal, and the amount of resistance they'll put into holding onto said beliefs without considering actual evidence is astounding. I could connive and finagle megabucks from the rubes just playing on this. I'm in the middle of an argument that a) soilless mix contains no natural resources, so b) use slow-release dolomitic limestone because it only slowly releases anything while c) the natural pH of the peat and bark is around 4.5 but d) the dolomite will correct that quickly while simultaneously slowly releasing without e) unbalancing Ca to Mg ratios even though f) dolomite's Ca to Mg ratio is around 2, g) with the optimal ratio being about 6. If you can untangle that argument, I'll give you a cookie).

[Hammbone81]

Thanks for the insight. I'll just buy my cracked corn and be happy.

No thanks on unraveling that web. I'm a Mechanical Engineer... all things biological perplex me. That's why I'm truly appreciative of you and your experience Morph!

[fastboat]

Not much simpler than two 3/8 diameter pills every AM before she gets the tasty treat (I don't think the vitamins are the best flavor, it took bit to get the dog to eat them at first). Seriously, the dog is 65 lbs and pees all year long in a maximum of a 15sf area. Always green since using the vitamins, and that was definitely not the case prior. YMMV of course, but I'm a believer.

[MorpheusPA]

Thanks for the insight. I'll just buy my cracked corn and be happy.

No thanks on unraveling that web. I'm a Mechanical Engineer... all things biological perplex me. That's why I'm truly appreciative of you and your experience Morph!

Don't look at me, I'm a sometime programmer, occasional artist, and most recently, technical writer. I got most of my chemistry knowledge out on the streets, doing horrible things to earn it. Horrible things I shall remember fondly for the rest of my life.

Or, never sell yourself short. You can learn everything and anything you want to. If I can put a shelf together (not without some tears and swearing), you can learn basic biology.

And again, always ask questions.

[Jackson]

I like the sugar idea Morph! I have 2 dogs. One pees all over the yard and doesn’t cause any issues. The other pees on the same square foot every day. Most of the year it’s not a problem it’s usually the greenest / fastest growing grass in the yard, but the dead of summer and around this time it looks a dead spot. I’ll dump my hummingbird feeder out on that patch weekly when I refill to see how the sugar works! Best part is that it costs nothing because the syrup was just going to go down the drain.

[MorpheusPA]

It should work pretty well, but I'd water that in a little bit. The sugar syrup there is a sugar stock, and pretty concentrated...enough to attract ants. A lot of ants. Who could potentially bother the dog. I have enough problems repelling the ants from my feeders.

So in that case, simply dilute it down enough to be uninteresting, or wash it in fully. It'll also make it work a lot faster since it has to get into the soil to activate anyway.

[Hammbone81]

SO... I put down about 18lb/M cracked corn last Thursday 4/8/21. (18lb/M is my Spyker spread at WOT and used exactly 4 bags, so I'm sticking with it.)

My initial reaction - WOW! What a mess. The neighbors are definitely talking! Haha. Also, the dogs LOVE it! They keep asking to go outside to eat corn. Nonetheless, I'm committed. I'm going to follow the advice and do this monthly through September or October.

I going to head back up to the feed mill this week to pick up my SBM and put that down in the next week or so. Perhaps I'll wait until this cold spell passes?

[turf_toes]

You’ll have tiny corn plants springing up in your lawn. It shouldn’t be unexpected.

Just cut them down with your mower.

Frankly, the corn weeds are why I use alfalfa or soybean meal.

[Hammbone81]

Frankly, the corn weeds are why I use alfalfa or soybean meal.

I can just as easily get alfalfa. The reason I'm using corn is to get OM & carbon up without "feeding". My plan is to use SBM for feeding.

I did alfalfa once at the old house a few years ago. HOLY COW! Takes a while to start working, then hang on!