7 Simple Steps to Stop Dog Urine from Killing Your Grass
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There are so many joys to owning a dog. They make for wonderful companions, great friends for children, excellent watchdogs, or even top-notch workers. However, owning a dog isn’t all sunshine and roses.
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One of the biggest nuisances is watching your lawn fall victim to the nitrates found in dog urine.
Dog urine has the inexplicable trait of actually burning your grass through the nitrogen compounds found within. You’ll be able to easily identify the clear-cut signs of burnt grass by yellow spotting or bare patches of lawn where grass just won’t grow any longer.
Fortunately, there are ways to keep your lawn looking as fresh as ever! Here are some simple tips that you can use to keep your grass looking great. Get ready to learn how to stop dog pee from killing grass:
Top 7 Ways to Stop Dog Urine Killing Grass:
1. Train Your Dog to Pee Elsewhere
This may seem like a no-brainer, but the first thing you should try is teaching your dog to pee somewhere else. If your pup isn’t urinating on your lawn, there’s no way it will damage it in the first place.
Now, this doesn’t mean encouraging your dog to pee on your neighbor’s lawn either. But you can always create a designated dirt patch in the back corner of your yard that’s strictly your doggy’s use. This will not only keep the rest of your lawn looking fresh, but it’ll make cleaning up after your pooch much easier as all of their droppings will be in one place. You can encourage this through the use of yard stakes that attract dogs to your area of choice.
2. Plant More Urine-Resistant Grass
There are plenty of different types of grass available, and some of them are just much more sensitive to dog urine. Among the most sensitive grass varieties are Bermuda and Kentucky Bluegrass. They’ll be the quickest to yellow and burn, leaving your yard with unsightly spotting.
However, swapping over to a grass variety such as Fescue or Ryegrass could make all the difference. Fescue is great for northern climate lawns with their extreme resistance to colder temperatures, while Ryegrass is a great low-maintenance variety that grows quickly and in abundance.
3. Encourage Your Pup to Drink More Water
If you can’t designate a specific area for your pup and replanting is out of the question, you’ll need to find a way to minimize the burning effect of the nitrogen in your dog’s urine. This can be as simple as diluting it straight from the source!
Ensure your dog drinks more water and stays hydrated. This will actually lower the concentration of nitrates within their urine and minimize the effects of grass burn. However, this can create a whole new issue of more frequent urination. But the desired effect will still hold true. You’ll just have to let Fido outside to potty more often.
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4. Water the Area After Urination
Another good tip to stop yellowing and dead grass spots is to water your grass — or the areas of urination — immediately afterward. This process will actually help dilute the harmful nitrates within their urine and lessen their effects.
This also is conducive to a healthy lawn. In order to negate extra work, try and sync your dog’s bathroom schedule to your daily lawn care routine. You’ll find both much easier to manage when working in tandem.
5. Supplement Your Dog’s Diet with Nitrogen Blockers
There are actual dietary supplements that you can feed your dog to minimize the damage the nitrogen in their urine does to your lawn. These supplements don’t actually rid urine of nitrogen, but instead bond with it to dilute it down.
One of the best of these supplements is the Nutri-Vet Grass Guard Max Dog Chewable Tablets. They’re relatively inexpensive and serve as a once-a-day vitamin.
6. Make Use of Dog Rocks
If you’re not comfortable with feeding your dog a chewable tablet, you can always alter the nitrates in your dog’s water. And this is much easier than trying to feed your pup a pill. Dog Rocks are small rocks that when added to your dog’s drinking water can actually remove small amounts of tin, ammonia, nitrates, and other harmful chemicals that can damage your lawn.
And the best part about these rocks is that you don’t have to do anything for them to work. Simply drop them into your dog’s water bowl and let them do all the rest. And after removing the extra chemicals from your dog’s urine, you may find that your grass grows even better. That’s because, minus the harmful nitrates, dog urine does have a bit of a fertilizer quality to it.
7. Take Preventative Action with Your Lawn
If you’re really looking to maintain a picturesque lawn, you’re going to want to take some preventative countermeasures against dog urine. And that could mean using a solvent specifically designed to minimize the damage of nitrate burning from urine.
See Spot Run Dog Urine Grass Saver is a great product that you can spray into your lawn to help do just that. However, the treatment works best as a preventative measure and not as a repairing agent.
Conclusion
Stopping your grass from chemically burning due to dog urine can definitely be a challenge. Luckily, there are a host of ways to mitigate the problem. Follow any of these simple tips in order to keep your lawn looking as fresh and clean as it possibly can.
Related Reads:
- Best UV Light for Dog Urine Detection
- The Best Indoor Dog Potties
- Our Favorite Pee Pads for Puppies
- 8 Best Dog Foods to Prevent Lawn Burn
Featured Image Credit: ThamKC, Shutterstock
