brown spots caused from dog urine

KarinW – posted 14 July 2005 05:56

We have St. Augustine sod and since finding out that the dog urine is causing the brown spots, what can we do to keep the grass from dying? It’s a bit hard to follow the dog around with the water hose to water the spots. Will the grass come back if you keep watering? Do you resod the spots? Short of getting rid of the dog is there anything you can do to get the grass to come back in?

Buck – posted 14 July 2005 09:04

Not sure about the areas already damaged. But, I have found that spots are a problem with some dogs, but not with others. May sound crazy, but I’d change the dog food. Our dogs eat Purina and have never produced a spot. The dog next door does not get Purina, but I’m not sure what in place. He will torch a spot in less than a minute. Has to do with the composition of the urine.

StinkyTurf – posted 18 July 2005 18:05

Train the dog to urinate in a single spot in the yard. Use some of their own urine to mark the designated spot or look for commercial products.

The grass will slowly refill the spot after you rinse it with water. You can plant new seed if you want to hasten the process.

You should probably NOT use any fertilizer with the new seed. The urine contains highly concentrated fertilizer to begin with.

Changing the dog’s diet does not seem to make much of a difference.

Ed77 – posted 24 July 2005 18:03

There are several things to consider here. You can either work on the grass or work on the dog. Good healthy grass should not be easily burned by the vast majority of dogs, so you can either try to fortify the grass or alter the dog and the urination process.

For the grass:

1. Don’t let the dog urinate on the grass during prime foliar feeding times. These are the early morning periods before the air temperature warms up. There are cells in all green plants that open up during cool periods to feed at the leaf surface itself. A plant in this state will be much more susceptible to toxic responses from high nutrient applications.(This also occurs in late afternoon if the daytime temperature was not too high)

2. Fortify the grass with a good basic full spectrum growth stimulator. Very strong, healthy, growing grass should be somewhat resilient to the toxic shock you are observing in the urinated areas. The cheapest and easiest to apply product I know of is Iron Sea Humus. It stimulates and supplements your regular fertilizer program to give you vigorous growth. I use humus products in the dog pen at home and the grass grows heaviest there. …I don’t like the idea of the extra growth in there, but I apply it because there are nut bearing trees in the pen.

And for the dog:

1. Modify the dog’s patterns. If they urinate more often, the concentrations in their urine goes down. They will drink to replace the urine, but there is a limited supply of chemicals available in the dog’s body.

2. …This is also tied to the water the animal is drinking. You might want to look into supplying a different water source. There are products that alter water enough to stimulate additional consumption in animals.(This results in urine dilution) I have been giving my dogs a charged water I came across. The jist of it is that increased water consumption will also support a better immune system and reduce associated complications. I can’t accurately comment on what it has done for them, but I find it much more pleasant to my taste.

3. The dog’s food may be tied to the problem. The factors there are inmumerable. …Experiment!

Good Luck!

Keeknrox – posted 10 August 2005 23:31

I have two dachshunds and this yellow spots on my lawn gig has been the story of my life for the last 6 years. I’m sick to death of trying to find a solution, but nevertheless, I keep trying. I’ve heard that applying gypsum to the lawn once a month helps. I found that it does help, but is surely not a cure. I’m moving to North Carolina from San Diego next month and I’ve resigned myself to synthetic lawn in the new house. I’m biting the bullet despite the pros and cons because it can’t be any worse than the yellowing grass spots problem I have now. I’m a scorpio and very much an “A type” personality…it HAS to be perfect! Good luck!

yekrub – posted 30 July 2007 13:32

The problem is caused by a high level of nitrogen in the dog’s urine. Dogs intake a high amount of protein which breaks down in their systems to nitrogen. Female dogs tend to have a higher concentration and also dogs that squat tend to leave more urine in a single area.

Watering the lawn daily in the area that the dogs normally urinate tends to help dilute the urine out of the grass. This is dependent on the drainage of your yard also. Having you dogs take supplements to decrease the nitrogen, is not the safest route to go. It could cause problems in the digestive system and had adverse reactions.

Leaving more water available to your dogs helps only if your dog will drink more. I know of no way to ‘make’ a dog drink more water. Unless the water has nitrogen already in it or a high level of protein, there is no use in changing where the water comes from that they drink.

So the best solution is to water the area immediately after or with in the first 8 hours. Dilution is best. Try not using any fertilizers in this are also.