Dogs & grass

[Anonymous]

We are closing on a house in DC has a lovely green lawn, not huge maybe 40’ x 40’. We have 2 dogs (7 and 8 years old) and have never lived in a home with grass before. In California, it was all native plantings and gravel. In our current house, it is native ground cover. So the dogs are used to being in a yard that they can pee in. To be clear, they are walked 2-3x a day, but they are getting to the point where they pee more, and sometimes need to go out in the middle of the night.

I had the awful experience of renting an Airbnb last summer and the dogs peed on a small patch of lawn and turned the grass brown. Just a couple small pee spots but totally mortifying. Fortunately, I was able to call the owners landscaper and have this repaired, but I worry about what my beautiful new lawn at our new home is going to look like after a few months with two dogs.

Aside from the obvious - training the dogs not to pee on the grass, or fencing it off, are there natural solutions that I can apply to grass to keep it from browning, or supplements I can feed my dogs to keep their pee from being acidic that anyone has personally had success with? I’m going to cross post in the pets forum.

Thanks for any tips or advice

[Anonymous]

You can water the spot so the urine gets diluted and doesn’t burn the grass. Or you can train them to go in one particular spot.

[Anonymous]

there are some dog treats that are supposed to neutralize the pee but not sure if they work.

[Anonymous]

We've trained our dog to go in a mulched area. It's working so far and our grass looks beautiful. I don't think there's another solution. We tried to rinse the areas but that's a lot of work and it didn't work very well.