Dog Spots

[GermanShep]

I have a small section of my back yard that I let my 2 dogs go to potty on because I don't want them going all over my entire property which is small to begin with. I restrict them to one area of my back yard only so I don't get urine burn marks all over my entire lawn. I will also add that I have very poorly drained clay based soil which turns into shale as you dig down deeper so I have less than ideal soil conditions to begin with. I am in MN so now that we are finally going into Spring time I am really dealing with a lot of dead grass back there. Is there anything that I can do to help this issue? I plan on reseeding as soon as the weather warms more and my soil temps come up but what else should I be doing to help get grass to grow back there again and what type of grass should I seed with? I am not to concerned with grass quality back there in the dog potty area because I know that will never have a nice lawn in that area. I will also add that it is also on the north side of my house so it does not get much sun and the soil often stays wet and damp. I am also contemplating adding gypsum to the area to possibly help the urine leech down through the soil with watering and rain? I would like any advice on what steps I should take to help get any type of grass growing or started back there again.

[MorpheusPA]

I tend to try to discourage spring seedings, particularly in May, although MN might be a place where you can get away with it (I'm not really familiar with Minnesota summers; if cool and damp, sure. The weather in St. Paul doesn't look awful in July compared to my home city, so...if you're careful to irrigate through the summer...maybe.

We had two dogs, and will again, with no dead spots; I feed organically, mow in all fall leaves, import leaves, and have my organic matter levels up in the double digits. Urine hitting the soil just gets bound into bacterial mass; I get it back as nitrogen, but very, very slowly. Rarely, in a dry period, some minor burns might result, but those do tend to fill back in due to the lawn being bluegrass.

So that's my recommendation. It's NOT an overnight fix; my soil is the result of 15 years of work.

What can be a real quick fix is that if you see the dog pee, put down a small handful of sugar (plain white sugar, brown sugar, whatever's cheap and easy to get). Water that in. The sugar provides a cheap fast carbon source for bacteria. The water dilutes the urine as well as mixes and waters in the sugar (and no, you won't get ants; they actually hate it).

[GermanShep]

Thank you for the sugar information. I will begin doing this right away along with watering down the area after they potty. I hope that this will begin to help the problem and now that the temps are beginning to warm up if you can call 40's warm, I can have the hose back out and ready to spray the area down
after they do their business. As far as my summers go, they are all over the place with no way to know what will happen? Some summers are very hot and dry and other summers are cold and wet and the way this Spring has been so far I am betting on the cold and wet version this year. I do have in ground irrigation system so this helps the dry periods. I have been waiting for the weather to get nice enough to get soil samples taken for my annual soil test as this summer will mark one year at my new house which is new construction so the builders soil has a long way to go. I am anxiously waiting to see if my soil improved over last years soil test. More to come...stay tuned!

[edslawn]

I have three dogs in a fenced-in backyard, so I deal with a similar challenge. The first comment is that getting the soil chemistry correct and raising your organic material levels, as Morph describes above, is a big help in my experience. The sugar helps but it can be really hard to find the spot unless you are standing with them at the time.

I also have created a perimeter of wood chips that I trained the dogs to use instead of the grass. Pic below. Surprisingly, the dogs learned pretty quickly and have stopped peeing on the grass. My 2-year-old lab mix likes to poop on the grass, but this is much less of a danger and easy to scoop up.

Now I just have to deal with the poa issue but that's another story...

[GermanShep]

I have been contemplating putting down mulch or something similar to what you have done on your lawn. What kind of wood chips do you use and
where can I find a good source to buy wood chips? I have many home improvement centers in my town and most of them sell mulch so I will check into the wood chips idea. I have a very open rear yard area that often gets very high winds so I think that mulch will be blowing around and messy which I experienced at my last property and I told myself that I would never do a large mulch area again but maybe heavier wood chips would not blow around? More information on the wood chips would be appreciated. Your lawn looks amazing for having three dogs so you obviously have trained them well!!

[bolson32]

If you're in St Paul Gerten's sells bulk mulch and woodchips.

There's actually quite a few that sell them. The big box stores sell them as well. Fleet Farm has chips in bags.

[edslawn]

I have been contemplating putting down mulch or something similar to what you have done on your lawn. What kind of wood chips do you use and
where can I find a good source to buy wood chips? I have many home improvement centers in my town and most of them sell mulch so I will check into the wood chips idea. I have a very open rear yard area that often gets very high winds so I think that mulch will be blowing around and messy which I experienced at my last property and I told myself that I would never do a large mulch area again but maybe heavier wood chips would not blow around? More information on the wood chips would be appreciated. Your lawn looks amazing for having three dogs so you obviously have trained them well!!

I have a local tree trimmer who drops them off when I need them. They are hardwood chips only and free. My understanding from them is that the municipal depots that used to accept this no longer do so. My trimmer has a list of locals like me who they use. In fact, yesterday they showed up with a 20 yard load that I had to turn away.