The urine is highly nitrogenized....it has burned the spots. Nothing will make the grass come back. If you have a garden or otherwise edging where the lawn stops, try to imagine where you might clean up the edges, maybe make a better curve to a garden plot. There, take some plugs. Measure the areas of the affected parts. Then use the same measures to cut free from the edges of the garden a plug. Be sure the edges are cleaned up...measure beyond the burn mark. Then place the plug in and stomp on. The plug will do the job within a short time. Otherwise, give your lawn a chance to fix itself. Usually just giving your lawn a decent amount of nitrogen fertilizer will help fill in the blanks. The place where your dogs have selected to go should be regularly watered extra to try to alleviate the problem before it becomes a problem. Overseeding in the spring when the soil begins to warm up is always a good idea. Anytime we can make our lawns more lush is the much better way to defend against those things that attack it....including pests and weeds.

Thank you! Gee, I am getting so much helpful information that I am filled with ideas. I decided to keep the pelargoniums inside as their bright red blooms perk up my house. Plus, they look so cute sitting in my Victorian Hungarian baby bath tub! The thing about zone 17 is that the three places I lived in that zone, the Richmond in San Francisco, Pacific Grove and Santa Cruz, is that they were all different. SF had tons of red spider mite and always there was mildew. PG had all fog, all the time, that was so heavy it dripped off the trees and made the ground look like it had rained. SC had lots of sun, but just south of it, on the Capitola border, it was very much like PG, lots of fog and chill. The mildew there was a surprise and finding a dehumidifier for my house required mail-order. Somehow, the people who gardened there seemed to know what they were doing and did fairly well or just accepted the losses. Growing the kinds of roses I like was not easy. My Graham Thomas (Austin) was very happy but any of the ones with a different colour on the edges than the center came out spotty and with the wrong colours. I will try to water often and pay attention to what is planted next to what. I have been talking to the neighbors and they are helping me adjust! My next step, once I take the plastic snow cover off (today was a mixture of snow and soft hail), is to put down lots of mulch. I have been told to consider 3-5 inches for anything that is not hardy as there is supposed to be a chance of frost through June 15. Sigh, lots of info!! I plan on tilling the second plot with compost--thanks for the recommendation, as I got excited and just used top soil for the first plot. I think that my bed with strawberries and daffodils is just going to stay as-is because it seems to be fine on its own. Luckily there are pine needles everywhere! I cleaned up some, but since I am a bit of a scrappy gardener, I left quite a bit. I think I will leave that still for the pee-balancing! Thanks to all who have helped. The ideas I have been given have made it all seem less of a culture shock. I think this might be the nicest and most helpful G-Web forum I've been on! Jennifer and her three dogs, Pablo Honey, Professor Gordon P. Farsworth and Lucy (the "P" stands for pee) :)

LOL!!! i had this same problem when we lived in a townhouse. tiny yard, stupid neighbor, 2 big labs. but our problem was a *little* worse. we had a grass yard but the neighbor had his whole back yard decked. he rarely, and i mean RARELY ever cleaned up dog poop. and the dogs' pee would seep through the cracks of the deck so there was no way to clean it up. it was the worse smell you can imagine. my son was a toddler but we could not use our back yard for anything because of the horrid smell. as if that wasn't enough, this guy was gone for days at a time. one of the dogs would get on top of the dog house and jump the fence so the other dog would bark incessantly ALL DAY LONG. i finally got to the point where i walked around and opened the gate to let the other dog out. this place was out in the country, surrounded by woods, so the dogs never went far. it was a last resort because the noise was so overbearing! i finally had a belly full of the smell and ended up calling the health department who gave him several warnings. he finally sold the place and moved. we celebrated!!!

Okay, here is my take. We have a dog that just loves to pee over places where the previous owner's dog peed. We are in the process of changing all of our floors to wood laminate. They are regular old laminate. I would have liked to change it all to hardwood, but half the house was already done when we moved in. :( Oh well. Our pergo (the original kind) that was glued together works just great. If anything sits on it, we never get any bubbling spots. The newer pergo that snaps together lets the water underneath to sit (our humidifier dripped out one day). So, fyi there. I've found, however, that our dog won't pee on any of the wood. Just carpet. I don't know why that is. So, if you're going to do the whole laminate route. I don't know if your dog will do the same thing. But, you might find that your dog won't pee on your tile floor either. Might be a safe bet. Carpet is somewhat close in nature to grass. :) Our dog will go out of her way to find a rug to pee on rather than pee on the wood floor. You definitely need to kilz the whole area. Our floors (where the carpet is now gone) has been completely kilzed to cut lingering smells. I'd go with the laminate and have that glued together if possible. My mom redid her whole home (with laminate) and her dogs still pee all over. I swear to you. Every time I go over there, one of those dogs have peed somewhere before I got there and while I'm there. Every time. She has bubbling spots in a few areas. I've since found out that you can replace those spots and drop a new flooring part into it. But, who want's to do all that. At our home and at my mom's, we have baby gates. That seems to cut down on the peeing issue here, but not so much at my mom's. By nature, dogs are going to pee on softer surfaces as it mimics grass. They will always go back to the same places to pee, especially if there had been a previous dog there. Though we don't crate our dog, we do keep her in her dog bed with a gate in front of it. That dog bed is cushier than my bed. So, I don't feel too bad. Honestly, your dog is almost eight now. Unless you're on top of it and you're willing to crate her and watch her like a hawk, I don't think you're going to fix this. Your best bet is to replace that carpet with glued laminate or tile. Kilzing is a must, though. Do your best to watch her and just expect that you're going to be cleaning up pee probably forever. :( Sad to say, but it's most likely true. I'd expect though, that your dog will find something like a rug to pee on rather than your new floor. She is getting up in age too. She is already geriatric. I'd consider the tile to be a little too rough for her especially as her joints deteriorate. If it were me, I'd go with the glued laminate or even a wood look plank linoleum until you don't have to worry about it anymore... That's coming from someone who deals with smart and moronic dogs (which we have now). I worked for a vet's office for years and years during college and after. Backed out at the last minute on vet school and the whole bit. We saw this same problem with tons of dogs. Some dogs are just too stubborn/moronic to change and we are too soft heart-ed to really fix it. :)