As a dog lover, I feel your pain. Bermuda is probably your best bet in terms of durability, but it doesn;t tolerate shade. The spots caused by the dogs' urine are the result of nitrogen--think fertilizer burn, and you have the same idea. My brother, who lives in West LA, resodded his yard with St Augustine, and it was no time before the dogs had run trails through it. He's letting the Bermuda take over. I'm wondering if you shouldn't lay down mulch or bark in the shadiest areas and convert them to landscaping instead of grass. There is no grass that can thoroughly stand up to dogs, but Bermuda is a good bet, except in shade.

I think it has been about 4 1/2 years and I find it very easy to keep clean, we have had to pull out the plunger 2x in the amount of time and it was a simple little pop and all was good. I have builder grade low flow toilets from 92-93 and each of them have a plunger next to them. I am happy to say I don't have to keep one next to my Toto. It has a pretty large water surface area too so the bowl stays clean. I love the fact it is skirted I have dogs and they shed like mad and I don't have to stand on my head cleaning around all those nooks and cranies! I will soon replace the other two with the same toilet. It's a good looking contemporary style that I really like.

Morph??? What the hell? Okay your grass is badly diseased. Since cornmeal does not seem to work on fescue, I would suggest getting a recommendation from the people who installed it. Take one of those blades that is covered in black lesions (first picture) and yellow lesions (second picture) to them. They have probably seen it before. The reason the grass looks bad after a few days is due to the disease preventing or slowing the uptake of moisture. There's moisture in the soil, but the roots aren't working right. If this was St Augustine I would say the problem was from watering too frequently. You're so close to the coastal breeze, I really think you can back way off on the watering frequency. Rachio is not the best system unless you insist on watering more frequently than the online lawn community is recommending. Are you getting fog?

"I am curious why you don't put much weight in the accuracy of the soil test because you haven't heard of this lab?" Answer: Most labs suck. :-) Back when we were testing labs against a relatively known sample, they were coming back with wildly different answers. Only two were very close--UMass and Logan. Logan won hands down in the end, and even they've had occasional problems. They're also the largest, best-monitored, and most economical at $20 a test. "Why would the lab be "estimating" the CEC number and overestimating based on calcium levels? Isn't this an analysis not an estimate (I don't understand how they perform the testing)." Any lab calculated CEC/EC from the saturations in the soil (except when doing an acetate analysis, and even then, it can get borked). With a higher-calcium soil, and yours is borderline, the EC is calculated too high. I've seen ECs calculated in the fifties that I knew durned well were around 10. Just like any other analysis that could be wrong, I can happily report "7.03139056." The number sound wonderful and incredibly accurate. If the significant digits are only 1, then anything past 7.0 is pointless. And if the test was bad, then the answer might actually be 6.8 or 7.4. I am curious what you skipped mentioning due to accuracy concerns." I'll usually specifically discuss saturation percentages and micronutrients. I didn't in your case as I'm not sure of the accuracy. There's no way I'd fiddle with, for instance, boron based on an unknown test. It's just too touchy and the consequences of making a mistake are too severe. "Potassium you mention not really needing until next year. What is the purpose of this in your eyes? I read it can help with cold hardiness, disease and stress tolerance, but what do you intend applying it to help with?" It's not seriously out of whack, but you paid for the test, so you might as well balance what isn't correct in the soil, eh? This would pull your potassium balance up to optimal. It's not so much "what I intend it to help with," but overall plant health over the long term. Over time, plants will use it, and the percentages will drop. Potassium is antagonistic with calcium and magnesium, both of which are high in your soil, so right now the plants are fighting for it rather too much and rather more than they should be. Adding more (going a bit high to counterbalance) restores a more-proper balance for your particular soil. "I am surprised to read you don't care about Nitrogen" On your soil test. :-) It'll vary by time of day, moisture in the soil, whether you applied fertilizer in the last few days or weeks, and the time of year. It's rare that any test of mine would come back with more than a few PPM because I feed organically, but any test will always come back with that during the growing season because I feed organically (except during dry spells). Feeding the lawn properly is critical and the feeding around here is tuned like a symphony. Testing nitrogen in the soil is something that doesn't concern me or anybody else who reads these things. Or, if they are concerned...well, I might question them as to why. "In regards to pH there is elemental sulfur and aluminum sulfate. Slow acting and fast acting from what I read. But your statement is there is nothing you can do about it. It is just too difficult and costly and too lengthy of a process or just that there is no noticeable benefit to trying to change it anyway?" More the latter. Aluminum...really should never be used. Al is toxic to plants and people pour it on their hydrangea (shaking head). If one must, use ferrous sulfate. I never met a soil that didn't have enough aluminum already for hydrangea color, all they need is the pH shift, and in a small area, iron will do. Elemental sulfur will get you into arguments because people actually seem to believe in the stuff for some reason. Dug in, it'll sometimes work really slowly for some period of time before it's gone and your natural pH starts to reassert itself because, in your case, you seem to have excess calcium in your soil hanging around. There are soils that are practically limestone and would literally require tons of sulfur, at which point they'd simply wash away as gypsum. In high-pH soils, it's slow to work, not terribly effective, and the bacteria that work on it are not active. In low pH soils, you don't need the stuff Surface applied, you lose 80%-95% to the air as smog. Don't do that. And I never recommend tilling in lawns because you'll end up with a permanently bumpy surface that you'll never get flattened again without professional help. Plus, most lawns simply don't mind any pH from 6.2 to 8.0 anyway. Arguments that they somehow object to anything over 6.8 are pure malarky. Go look at photos of nice lawns in Dallas, Texas--all grown on limestone bases. I never object to some extra calcium. It's not a problem, you simply have to adjust the potassium to account for it a bit.