For the life of me I cant envision a dog, any dog, causing compaction of soil unless they happen to be 200 pounders that continually go over a straight line of ground. I know a Sheppard is a large dog, but compact ground...I don't think so. Compaction can occur over time due to poor drainage, especially in clay soil and sometimes aeration can help. As far as the dog's urinating killing grass, there is absolutely nothing that will change that. Urine--especially they say, females watering is the worst, will kill grass due to its high content of nitrogen. Much like you could do the same thing if you spilled heavily some fertilizer. The only remedy is to stay ontop of their going; water the area more than usual, then dig up the damaged area and replace with plugs taken from other areas or do an overseeding. It helps to change the dogs' ritual of going in the same place constantly. Don't be misled by some who will tell you to change their diet, make it more dry causing them to not build up water in their system. That can only lead to your pet's health problem. Changing a dog's diet does nothing about his pee; it could though affect his health.

For leveling I would just add top soil to the barespots that need built up (making sure to compact it somewhat, I just walk over every square inch) and re-seed it at the same time. That's what I do for my tall fescue lawn. You need to get your watering cut down too, at best you only want to water 1-2 times a week max...long deep watering for those roots to grow downward and get established well. Just gradually start to increase your watering time (until it starts to pool or run-off) and start to skip watering days until you're at 1-2 times per week.

We recently had 2 friends building houses at the same time. DH does IT for a construction company, and friends are from work and in the field. It was interesting to see their approaches to having a house built. One friend check the job site every day and if he found something that wasn't done right he gave them a couple days to fix it. One weekend he went to the house and tore out half the drywall (I don't recall the exact problem) so they didn't have a choice but to rehang it right. The other friend had delay after delay after delay with an unresponsive builder. They cut their losses and bought a 1 year old house in the next subdivision over at a reduced price because there's still construction in the neighborhood. They couldn't be happier. There are worse things than walking away. On the grout front, I'd at least try to color it.

Unfortunately it's simply time to do it again. Just part of the maintenance associated with wood windows, no way to prevent it. You could consider adding film if your windows do not have low e, that would potentially offer some energy savings as well as block some of the sun that is damaging the finish.