You love your dog, and you love your
lawn and garden. But when one damages the other, it’s a problem. It’s not like you can give up either! In addition to digging holes, your dog also may damage your grass with urine, creating brown and yellow rings or spots on your otherwise green lawn. Here’s why and what you can do about it.
Why is your dog’s urine causing brown spots?
When your dog eats protein, as it should, it gets digested, metabolized and turned into nitrogen. Excess nitrogen is flushed from your dog’s system through urine. If your dog has a high protein diet and doesn’t drink enough water, its urine will be nitrogen-rich. Fortunately, this nitrogen doesn’t harm your dog or indicate anything is wrong with them.
Protein is an essential nutrient in your dog’s diet. So, you don’t want to eliminate it. Veterinarian and co-founder of MySimplePetLab, Nancy Willerton, however, recommends avoiding high-protein, meat heavy foods.
One way to address the issue without changing foods is to encourage your dog to drink more water, which can help dilute the potency of the nitrogen.
“Encouraging your dog to drink water helps dilute their urine. You can also feed your dog canned food or add water to dry food,” Willerton recommends.
Talk with your veterinarian about switching your dog’s pet food or changing their diet.
While plants need nitrogen to grow, too much of it can burn out your grass. Nitrogen, in fact, is a key ingredient in many fertilizers and plant foods. But too much nitrogen in one spot, as a result of a stream of urine, can burn that area, leaving a brown or yellow, dead circles or rings of grass, especially if you already add fertilizer with nitrogen to your lawn.
Girl dogs and dogs that pee in a squatting position may cause more harm because of their stream concentration, as opposed to male dogs that usually pee against a wall or structure.
Steps you can take to stop dog urine from killing grass
Fortunately, there are things you can do to save your grass without having to attempt to re-potty train your dog. Here are a few things you can do.
- Urine scald is caused by nitrogen in the urine, so avoiding high-protein, meat heavy foods is the best thing to do.
- Encouraging your dog to drink water helps to dilute the urine. In addition to bowls of drinking water, you can feed your dog wet/canned food or add water to their dry food.
Additional steps to resolve the issue include:
Increase hydration
As mentioned above, you can reduce the nitrogen concentration by simply getting your dog to drink more. Place additional water bowls around your house and outside. Drinking more water is also healthier for your pet, especially during the hot summer.
Use less fertilizer
Since fertilizer contains nitrogen, use less or find a low-nitrogen brand. You can also skip the areas your dog pees on. If your dog urinates all over your yard, you may not need any.
Hose down your lawn
To make the nitrogen less potent, water the areas where your dog pees to dilute the nitrogen concentration and reduce its effects. For maximum effectiveness, try to do this soon after your dog urinates.
Walk your dog in the morning
Walking your dog first thing in the morning and more frequently can help. Fido won’t pee on your grass and damage your lawn if he pees elsewhere.
Create a pee spot
If you can train your dog to
pee somewhere other than your grass, then you’ll eliminate your problem. Find an area away from your lawn, such as an area covered in dirt and not grass. Some pet stores sell Pee Posts, which are posts you can stick in the ground that provides a spot for your male dog to pee against, away from your lawn.
Replant dead grass areas
Once your lawn is damaged, you can’t repair it. The only thing you can do is replant it. When you replant these areas, use urine-resistant varieties of grass such as Ryegrass and Fescue. These varieties grow faster and have deeper root systems. Kentucky Bluegrass and Bermuda grass are more sensitive to nitrogen-packed urine.
Take care of your lawn
A little care goes a long way to making your lawn look better. Water it regularly and feed it pet-safe products, in addition to eliminating the pee problem and brown spots.
Feed your dog supplements
Supplements can help neutralize the effects of nitrogen in your dog’s urine.
NuturVet GrassSaver chews, for example, contain enzymes that help prevent your dog’s urine from damaging your grass. They also come in tasty peanut butter
biscuits with the same grass-saving ingredients.
Chew + Heal Lawn Savor supplements help eliminate grass damage and neutralize stool odor. Both brands contain healthy ingredients and, if fed to your dog daily, should diminish brown and yellow lawn rings and spots within two weeks.
Following these simple tips can help your lawn look better and healthier and also reduce your annoyance with your dog. Enjoy your lawn and your pet this summer. Wag more, bark less.
