You have heard the old saying: ”You can have a wonderful, lush green lawn, OR you can have a family dog, BUT YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH!”
We love our dogs, and we are proud of our lawns, and the reason we embarked on the LONG journey of learning what causes Dog Spots and how to fix them was driven by our refusal to accept that you cannot have both.
You want an effective and reliable solution? First you have to identify the true, Root Cause of these Dog Spots.
Simply put, it is the spike in excess Nitrogen that is confined to a small patch of grass typically delivered by your dog emptying its bladder. Female dogs are often blamed exclusively since they tend to squat and empty the bladder all at once – so much so that many Horticulturists refer to the characteristic dead grass spot as “Female Dog Spot Disease”. As many pet owners will tell you, this is NOT a problem exclusive to female dogs! Males, once they begin urine marking (usually around one year of age) will utilize numerous scent posts resulting in several small volume deposits rather than large volume puddles. In this regard, they are “spreading the wealth” and your lawn may be better able to handle these small volume nitrogen bursts. However, this is not the case for the poor young tree, shrub, bush or flower that is victimized by repeated markings of your male dog or dogs.
Dog urine (and feces, too!) is basically a form of fertilizer, in that it is comprised largely of Nitrogen. Nitrogen is definitely beneficial, however, it can also cause serious damage to your lawn by essentially giving it too much of a good thing all at once. Your lawn is typically able to handle small amounts, and little doses often result in an actual green-
Because Nitrogen is actually an effective fertilizer, the dead spot that results will often have a green ring around it where By organically improving the biology of your soil, you enable your grass to withstand the blast of nitrogen and turn the entire brown patch into a lush and green patch of lawn. This organic improvement in the beneficial microbiology of your soil is what actually cures your dog spot problem.
Whatever you do, DO NOT ADD MORE FERTILIZER!!!!!
See the above paragraph for the lengthy discussion of how too much Nitrogen is the culprit, and adding more of it will simply compound your problem. That means, FERTILIZER WILL MAKE THINGS WORSE!
Changing your pet’s diet WILL NOT WORK, which is reason enough to ignore this terrible advice.
Your Dog is a Carnivore, and as such, requires protein in her diet in order to be healthy and happy. The chemical processes in the dog’s body that break down the proteins it eats produce nitrogen as a waste product, which is where the nitrogen in the urine comes from. Unless you are willing to starve your pet of protein, you cannot eliminate the nitrogen from its urine. You may come across many well intentioned, but totally baseless “solutions” on the Internet that recommend potentially damaging and dangerous changes to your dog’s diet. Some people will tell you that you should add things like baking soda or tomato juice to your dog's food in order to change the pH balance of its urine. The fact is that the pH of the urine has little, if anything, to do with brown spots, and this advice will have little or no effect on your dog spots. Besides being ineffective, the number one reason to ignore these suggestions is that they are also potentially very dangerous to your pet’s health. Damage to your dog’s kidneys or digestive system should not be risked, and your trusted veterinarian should always be consulted prior to making any modifications with respect to your dog’s diet.
We are dog owners and dog lovers. One of the most infuriating things I experience was all of the missinformation I discovered. The “internet” is a marvelous thing, but, listen to me people, you have to be CAREFUL of what you read! There is so much downright bad advice, full of speculative answers given as fact and some can be absolutely dangerous, especially to your beloved pets.
Take this one, for example: You want to get rid of dog spots, make changes to your pets diet.
One, it won’t work, that is, unless you take it to the mortal extreme and eliminate your dog’s protein intake which will actually kill your pet, thereby eliminating the cause of the dog spots.
Here’s a link for an eHow asking “how do I change my pets diet to prevent dog spots” and who knows how many thousands (millions?) will read it and endanger their pets by following the disastrous “advice”?
The No Cost Way – You Get What You Pay For
One of the solutions that actually helps is to make sure to aggressively flush these areas with copious amounts of water immediately after your dog has emptied, and to make sure to do this each and every time. While this will help, it is extremely inconvenient to have to carry around a 5 gallon bucket of water and douse the ground every time your dog has to go. Compliance is a big drawback of this “solution” in that you will never be able to be there every single time, and additionally, this flushing with water actually washes nearly ALL of the Nitrogen through the root zone and into the ground water. Your turf grass needs some Nitrogen for its overall health and vitality. It is much better to find a solution that will bind the salts and fix the Nitrogen, storing it in the root zone in a form that is useable over the long run, providing maximum health and vibrancy to your lawn.
How to get rid of Dog Urine Spots
TREAT THE SPOTS Themselves for Repair and Recovery
For most effective treatment of the spots themselves, where the grass is often dead from the toxicity of the soil, do the following:
For best results, remove the dead grass and thatch from the spot. Onto each spot, Sprinkle 1-
10-