I think TW's keyboard is acting up. What he tried to say was to quit overseeding. And his reasoning is that you started out with (almost) the best grass money can buy and overseeded it with the worst grass money can buy. That's a shame but what's done is done and cannot be undone without a full renovation. Now you have a lawn that is essentially average bermuda. The good news is your lawn has full coverage except a few spots. The secret to keeping crabgrass out is proper care. First of all, find and download the Bermuda Bible. Texas Weed wrote it several years ago after a career of operating a bermuda grass sod farm. You cannot get better advice. Follow the advice (memorize it) in the BB and you will be on your way toward a weed free lawn. Crabgrass does not necessarily come back year after year. It only comes back when you have bare spots and water the lawn too often. It doesn't look like you have bare spots so the only issue is proper watering. This time of year you should be watering only once per MONTH. If it rains it rains and then you don't water. The idea is to keep the soil surface dry as long as possible until the grass roots need water again. It is the moist surface of the soil where crabgrass seeds germinate. They will not germinate on dry soil. Gradually as the temperatures increase, the grass will green up and start pulling more moisture out of the soil. Keep the lawn mowed fairly short (this is a bermuda trait) and gradually increase the frequency from every 4 weeks to every 3 weeks. Watch the grass for signs of wilting and then water. Do not pay any attention to how dry or hard the soil is. Soil surface appearance has nothing to do with grass performance. When you water, water a full inch. You can measure how long it takes your sprinkler to get a full inch by using cat food or tuna cans placed around the yard. With my system it takes 8 full hours to get an inch. My neighbor's sprinkler puts out an inch in 20 minutes. Every system is different, so measure yours. Follow the BB on regular mulch mowing, infrequent watering, and monthly fertilizer apps with a high nitrogen fertilizer and your lawn will look fine with no weeds or herbicides.

Corgis are so cute w/ their stumpy little legs! I've met several and they all seemed to be happy, laid back little dudes. Schnauzers are cute, but bossy little beasts! The clinic where I volunteered had one and her nickname was the 'general' b/c she would march herself all over the clinic all day long and bark at anything she thought was out of order! That was funny and cute. My SIL has one too, and her's bit me out of nowhere. Not funny or cute. Since then has bitten several other people, but they just don't have the heart to put it down. Completely irresponsible IMO, but they live out of state so I stay out of it. PJ is right, no matter what breed you get, sign up for classes and get the dog and YOURSELF and your kids trained w/ the dog. I think a lot of people adopt dogs who are already trained, but the new owners don't understand the signals or how to communicate commands to the dog, so it all falls apart rather quickly. One of my co-workers once told me how her big lab kept jumping up on her 9 yo daughter and that was making her little girl scared of dogs. So she wanted to get rid of the lab and get a smaller breed dog. I asked her if the lab had ever been to a training class. NO (of course not). I told her the smaller breed dog would still jump if it were not trained either, and she wouldn't be solving her problem as much as just trading one for another. I suggested signing up the lab and the daughter for training, so the girl could learn to control the dog. That would give her confidence and teach the dog to respect her. I hope they did that. I never heard back from her. Good luck w/ your search. It's hard looking w/ a rescue group when you're on the outskirts of everything. Have you checked to see if your immediate county has a shelter? A lot of smaller towns and counties have a tiny little shelter...ususally completely unheard of and anything that ends up there doesn't have much hope of finding a home.

Well first of all, you had me at "I find them instead to be overbreeded, yappy and high-strung". I expected to open this post and find yet another person who wants a chihuahua or yorkie for their 3 year old. LOL Not only because I do love a rescue dog, but primarily because of what you said - a mix may be less high strung because they aren't as overbred. I'll also vote for a rescue. You can still find very small mix rescues. One thing to bear in mind though (as another poster mentioned) is your mother's age. I'm going to bet she'd prefer an adult rather than the higher maintenance of a puppy. In addition, age is a consideration due to the possibility of the dog outliving the owner. I bring this up because its difficult when someone adopts a baby toy breed that will live to be 18 years old, and the adoptor is already in their 70's. When the owner passes, unfortunately this can leave a situation of trying to house a now-geriatric pet. Tiny dogs have better prospects in those situations, but its good to at least try to match up the life expectancies. (Sorry if this is anyway harsh sounding, I'm only trying to be practical and helpful). In addition, with age comes energy-level. That should be a consideration too. There are small breeds and toy breeds that aren't long haired which would be a little less grooming. However, all dogs do have vet bills. For small dogs with short hair, I'm thinking dachschund and pugs. But there are others out there of course and plenty of mixes in between.

Thank you for all the great ideas and info on how to landscape the way you have it! The retaining wall we just added last fall as the side of the hill was starting to cover a window over there and my dad (a civil engineer) said we needed a retaining wall to keep the side of the hill from becoming structurally unsound. The fence is there because that side of the yard is not dog proof yet and probably won't be until we rent a big dumpster for the yard renovation as the previous owners left a bunch of dangerous (to dogs) junk under those stairs. Because at the time we didn't have the time to clean up the yard, we just put up a fence and have just left it there as we have discovered the rocks and yard in general isn't working out well for the dogs anyways so we would have to redo everything. I don't know what kind of soil we have. I've been planning to stop by the local Extension office to get a soil test kit to find out what the soil is like. There is a bare patch of grass near the deck stairs that has been bare since we purchased the house so I'm wondering if that part of the yard has something wrong with the soil. We have tried seeding that area multiple times with different type seeds and nothing ever worked. You have me very excited about doing the yard now. I can't wait to remove all that rock.