Dog urine is basically high nitrogen fertilizer so what you’re seeing is basically a fertilizer burn!

If there is no other place for him to ‘do his business’ the most useful thing to do is to immediately flood the area with water after he pees - i.e. hose it down well with water or keep a filled watering can nearby that you can use to provide water to dilute the urine.

It is also a good idea to make sure his water bowl is kept full so he does not get dehydrated, which makes his urine a more concentrated ‘fertilizer‘ source!

There are supplements that are supposed to change the dog's urine. I have never had to use them for our dogs but might be worth a shot.

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@dchall_san_antonio Thank you! That's very detailed and helpful. I'll give it a try.

Please let us know whether, and how well, it works for you.

Thanks, I'll do that!

Interesting, but wow the ants if I ever tried that.

Agree with woodyoak.

Beginning back in very late summer 2001, this was widely promulgated ( a federal initiative):

“The solution to pollution is dilution.”

"...wow the ants..." NO EXCUSES. If you have a healthy soil system, there won't be enough ants to bother with.

If that's in your driveway area because that's where he has to pee, I would just tear up all the grass there and put in new landscaping with mulch in between the attractive plants.

When does the sugar need to be applied to the “pee spot”? Immediately? As a preventative? that won’t work for us... We love dog-sitting for our grand dog, but I hate the pee spots on the back lawn. She’s still a puppy, so in a hurry and hard to shepherd off the lawn in time. I have been drowning the area with water if I see her do it, and that does help, but I’ve never heard of sugar?

@Mrs. S I don't know about landscaping. We've got our jobs cut out for us with landscaping already. This is the area between the fence and sidewalk perpendicular to the driveway. It's a fairly thin strip, maybe five feet. I can't get a picture right now, but here's a rough sketch to give the general idea.

I don't know what area you're in. But, if the area is along the sidewalk, maybe a row of easily trimmable hedge. Low maintenance. Where I live in SoCal, maybe a row of Coastal Rosemary or Texas privet--things that are pretty low water usage and so easy to grow. the dog could pee on them, and they won't die. And it'll give you a little separation from a public sidewalk.

We're in zone 6/7 on the east coast. A row of bushes would cut down on the weed trimming, which would be great! And give us more privacy. Our dog won't go on bushes though. He's weird that way.

Well, then, make the border wider. At least the marked grass wouldn't be visible from the sidewalk.

Use artificial grass

Check this link: www.asiagrass.com

Just remember—if a dog’s pee will kill grass, it can (and frequently will) kill plants as well. Ask me how I know....currently trying to re-train one of my dogs to stop peeing in the exact same garden spot all the time. So far the dog is winning.

@dchall_san_antonio I'm curious what you mean about not having ants if you have a healthy soil system. We don't have an ant problem here but we had a major ant problem in the last place we lived (second story apartment with no lawn around the building).

@mle0782 It's hard! We love our dog, but now with a house and kids a dog is a lot of extra trouble. I don't think we'll be getting another one for a while after this. I thought about making a gravel area somewhere for him to , but that might be smelly.

Quentin, you cannot compare a lawn problem with a second story apartment ants situation. As soon as sugar on the soil gets a splash of water from rain, dew, or irrigation, it's going to melt into the soil, and the microbes will get it all.

There are a lot of similar questions that come up when I discuss organic fertilizer with people. My favorite organic fertilizers are alfalfa pellets (rabbit food) and corn meal (deer food). I live in a rural community with hundreds of protected deer and hundreds more jack rabbits. My neighbors throw out corn for the deer, but when I fertilize there is never any influx of critters to the yard.

Sorry, I meant that I was curious why a healthy lawn wouldn't have ants. We don't have an ant problem here and putting down sugar was unproblematic.

Gotcha. A healthy soil and lawn should not have an ant problem because the mini ecosystem is managing itself. In a healthy yard the beneficial microbes and insects will out-populate the pest species. You might have some ants, but they should not be a problem. I did once have a problem with ants in the house. When I traced them back, they never touched my yard. They tracked through a hole in the house to the concrete to the fence, up the fence and all the way to the back. Then they disappeared down the neighbor's fence. I never found the mound, but I was able to kill them by feeding a concoction of sugar, molasses, and yeast. That only works for sugar type ants.

I tried a lot of things, including reseeding and transplanting sod. It was still all patchy eventually. Ultimately, I discovered the best solution to the problem of dog urine ruining the lawn is to get rid of the dog. :)

Wow. Imagine getting rid of a pet because you were upset about how some grass looked.

I was actually being facetious. What really happened was that our very old dog was having incontinence issues, which unfortunately coincided with us having a new baby. It was too much for my wife. He's living with my parents now and very happy. We were all sad to see him go. We weren't sad to have our grass back though.

Oof tone is hard to read on the internet. I’m sorry - I hope you can see how that sounds though! We struggled with issues like that with our older girls (3 dogs total) and the grass did get pretty burned up. We were able to keep it under control pretty well with a good soak (minus the occasional spot when we got lazy).

Stax, I'm not sure who you were quoting, but the link I provided to the Purdue and Texas A&M research says just the opposite. Here is the link again.

Based on Quentin's statements, sugar did not work for him. Now I'm curious, Quentin, where do you live and what kind of grass do you have? I'd like to work out why it worked many times for me but not for you.

Sure, I can go deeper into it.

The problem is excessive amounts of concentrated liquid nitrogen fertilizer in the form of urine all in one spot. Urine (from mammals), urea (from birds and other dinosaurs ;-)), and ammonia (from fish) are all processed by the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, microarthropods living in the soil. When these little critters are well fed and watered, their populations can usually handle the occasional concentrated dose of urine, urea, or ammonia. The problem comes when the soil does not get regular feedings of microbe food or when the soil dries out for too long. If these things happen, then the microbe population falls resulting in not enough critters to handle the concentrated dose of urine. In the wild world of Nature, normal microbe food is urine, dung, dead animals, hair/fur, scales, blood, dead plants/roots, and whatever natural materials that drip or drop to the ground. Also, they consume each other as they die and the waste products from the other tens of thousands of microbe species. The soil microbial food chain is called the soil food web, because it is so interrelated from species to species. The appearance of a dead spot of grass from dog urine is a dead giveaway that the soil microbes are not working right. "Normal" turf and soil should be able to handle it. By applying sugar, the microbes should convert from trying to process the urine over to repopulating. Then, once the population is more balanced, the sugar is gone and the new population of microbes should take care of the excess urine. In my case the spots appeared in the dead of winter when the grass had been dormant for 2 months. About 3 weeks after using the sugar, the spots had 8 inch tall lawn grass, deep green, and very dense. That is what you would expect to happen by applying fertilizer to one spot IN THE SUMMER, not in the winter. Somehow the sugar fed microbes also awakened the grass in those spots and then fertilized that grass. As I recall the grass returned to dormant as it was still winter.

If you are way more interested in soil biology, then try this link to the USDA Soil Biology Primer. Get some refreshments and get comfortable, because there's at least 50 pages of reading, but lots of that is illustrations.

Lime is not covered in the biology primer.

Certainly there are people who apply lime and get great results, but it is not a universal truth that it works for everyone. Most of south Texas is standing on 1000 feet of ancient sea bed made completely from seashells. It is pure limestone. There are other parts of the country with similar circumstances. The best way to tell is to get a good soil test that checks for pH and for calcium content.

The best bet would be to either find a way of changing the smell of that specific section of the yard - lawn fertiliser will not only keep them away from that slot but also help with rejuvenating the affected area. You may also spray vinegar or repellents on the affected area.

Found this interesting article from thefavpet that covers the best way to keep dogs out of your yard.

Getting automatic sprinklers may also go along way as it will prevent your doggo from trying to ruin the affected area.