Advice needed - pet dog garden issues!

mrsmalooly

Apologies if this has been already covered, I'm new to this site. I am renting a house with a fairly decent sized garden 108 sqm.......when I moved in there was a lush lawn, now it is non-existent, there are deep holes, most of the grass has been killed off through urination or running on. They do not spend a great deal of time outdoors as they are house dogs. A male Labrador and a female Golden Retriever pup who is yet to grow to full size! Don't get me wrong they are absolute sweethearts, but I need to sort out the garden asap as my landlord will not be impressed. The garden is just not a nice place to be as it is more mud than grass, and it now smells strongly of urine.

I have looked into buying an enclosure for them so that I can contain them within one area when they are out - not ideal for them I know. The enclosure will need to be bolted to concrete slabs as I feel that it must be roofed to provide shade for them. Does anyone know if just laying the slabs on the existing lawn will be ok? Obviously I can't concrete them down.

I have even looked into buying a synthetic lawn which would be ideal and fabulous for all of us but then I realised how much it was going to cost - at that price I don't imagine they have many customers who don't own their own home!

I'm thinking the enclosure is probably my best option, and then attempting to reseed the rest of the lawn?

Any advice would be much appreciated

barbiegirl

On the holes, someone else here suggested when you fill them in put some of the dog poo in them, at the bottom and the dogs won't dig them again. We tried it and so far so good :-)
On the pee, there are some rocks you can get that reduce bitch burn. I haven't needed them, but I think they can be got on the net.
To repair, fence off half the garden for a couple of weeks, let the grass recover, spinkle some seed and feed, then when it is back, do the same with the other side. Then don't cut the grass too short and hopefully it will all be fine.
Best of luck. Gardens and doggies don't always work well :-)

Skadi

We put up fencing (the cheap plastic stuff) in order to fence off part of the garden. We have a garage at the end of the garden so the dogs are forced to walk up the driveway in order to get onto the grass. We have a large garden so soon we will fence half of it off in order to re-seed and allow them to play on the other half.

They seem to do most damage in winter as the ground is hard, and the grass can be easily damaged.

There is a small area (which is easily accessible) near the kitchen and so this is where they mainly go to toilet making it easier to clean up. We tend to leave the grass here grow longer than the main garden.

At the moment I have a 3yr old Malamute and a 4 mth old Newfoundland, so there are starting to be lots of little holes being dug in the garden. Our solution for that is not to leave them alone in the garden for too long. They both prefer to be outside rather than inside so it often means calling them in for treats or disrupting their play by tossing a ball or a tug toy towards them. The Newfoundland is getting used to getting treats, so if she notices us in the kitchen she will come racing in to get and eat her treat and then head back out again. We found with our Mal that she did the most damage in the garden when she left outside for a long period (over an hour) and I guess like a little child she found lots of things to amuse herself with (such as taking the plants out of the pond, pulling up rose bushes, burying things). Oh and it's no harm for the dogs to have outside toys and inside toys. That way there are toys in the garden to amuse themselves with rather than them having to find flowerpots to chew and fling around.

barbiegirl

Skadi wrote: »

find flowerpots to chew and fling around.

Ah the tossing of flower pots a favourite with my two no matter how many toys are outside :-)

mrsmalooly

Thanks barbiegirl, I never thought of putting the poo in the holes.....eugh! But if it works! I think its the big boy thats causing the most damage as he urinates like a girl! I've read that pouring 3 times more water straight on the patch after every wee to neutralize the nitrogen will help on a long term basis. Great idea about fencing off part of the garden........many thanks!

mrsmalooly

Thanks Skadi, where did you get the cheap fencing from? I live near a Woodies - would that be the place? Yeah, they are never left out for long periods, sometimes over an hour but of course in summer I'll be expecting them to be out more........I think Labs and Malamutes are fairly destructive breeds, must be a sign of intelligence I reckon! I never told my boy off for digging as I didn't view it as too much of a problem........just something dogs do!......ha For a while i thought the snow was the reason for the baldness, but then I realised everywhere else on the estate was lush!

Skadi

Yes, Woodies should have cheap fencing. It just needs to be tall enough so that the dogs don't think that they can easily walk over it. It doesn't need to be sturdy, we just use bamboo canes to hold the fence up. Our newfoundland took to trampling on the fence in order to walk over it. So we just added more bamboo canes to make it more sturdy.

I agree with you on the destructiveness being a sign of intelligence. Our Malamute used to first check to see what my husband was doing in the garage. If he was busy she would go off to the pond and jump in and remove all the plants from it. She was obviously checking whether he was busy or not.

Crazyivan 1979

I have the same problem with my lawn and my male dog.

He does not really spend alot of time on the lawn (large patio for during the day), we have the lawn gated off.

It is just him urinating on the lawn, which I cannot really stop him from doing, it is always where he has gone and we are left with big scorch marks.

I did try and build him a little sand box on the patio for a toilet, but he never used it.

Suppose I just try to dilute it a bit with water after he has gone. Is there
something called dogrox that you can put in their water to neutralise the excess nitrates?

kildare.17hmr

if you can get slabs and block off a corner for them for during the day id go that route, a dog house will do for shelter and you can make a fence very easy out of a few pallets that you will get for free in any factory. i had the same problem with my pointer and german shepard who live out the back and destroyed it during the winter, they now have a big concrete pen with pallets for a fence and 2 dog houses, perfect for them and very easy to keep clean.. as for the garden i dug it all up and put down new grass seeds a few weeks ago!

anamaria

I am having very similar problems! I have a 8 month old terrier X and my back garden looks like someone has been bombing it! Giant craters everywhere. I have filled in holes and re seeded them but to no avail. She only digs when she is outside unsupervised, but it is hard to keep her in when we aren't outside as she loves playing outside as we have quite a large back garden fenced off for her

The Sweeper

I have a very large back garden (my whole block is 1300 sq m) so I don't suffer burnt grass so much (mainly because I don't have a lush lawn, I have lawn with weeds, and weeds are more resilient to being peed on!)

However I do have a digger. Gus likes to excavate. However he does it when he's bored. He put an enormous hole in the middle of my back yard and used to gather things around the hole as it was his 'hang out spot'. For instance, I have this 2ft x 1ft and 1ft deep crater, and around it will be a broken flowerpot, my gardening trowel foolishly left out in the rain, a torn up towel, a kong, a rubber bone, a marrowbone, so on, so forth.

I turned one side of my yard into a dog run simply to prevent Gus destroying the whole place when he's alone during the day. I had a natural shape behind the garage where I could fence flush with the end of the house, so I did it - and while it was pricey at the time, it was simply the BEST idea EVER. (I built a post and rail timber fence and nailed dog wire to it and then hung a gate).

mrsmalooly

Thanks guys for all the replies, anyone know what is the going rate for basic concrete slabs?

@Kildare.17hmr my dad said I will need to rotavate the lawn before throwing down the seed, sounds like you had the same idea digging, I presume he is right it is necessary?

@Crazy ivan 1979 have heard of dogrox before but don't know if it works.....I would be a little skeptical as presumably if they worked so well then the urine burn wouldn't be such a common problem.

@Skadi That's funny! My lil 5 month old pup is a food thief and she's bloody good at it, she waits til we're distracted in the living room then creeps (without a noise on wooden floors) into the kitchen to see if there's anything around.........brat!