Help me save my lawn!

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Penguin_Toes

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Hello knowledgable people

I have a 9 month old whippet, my first ever dog, who is fab and has been a great addition to the family EXCEPT.....

Our lawn has been completely trashed by wee burns. We are very keen gardeners and it is driving us bananas and I wondered if any of you had any bright ideas for other things we could try. So far we have attempted:

  • Reseeding, but grass wont grow where the wee burns are, it must have effected the soil
  • Rocks to put in his water bowl. This definitely helped, but as he is getting older he is starting to prefer to drink out of puddles and our pond and plant pots so it is getting less effective.
  • Watering the lawn each evening to try and dilute any wee.
Is there anything else we can try? We spent half a day at the weekend digging the patches out and replacing with new turf, but another four patches have already appeared, we can't do that every weekend 😂

Thank you in advance for any help - the trouble maker is the one on the left!
 

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I’m no help, I had a small lawn but with 3 dogs it was mainly mud in the winter and lots of bare patches in the summer. I am afraid I gave up and had artificial grass laid and I know it’s frowned on but it’s been great for me and my dogs seem to spend much more time out there now. I had a path round the outside of the real grass and replaced that with raised beds so I feel I have helped to make up for lack of real grass for the wildlife… I got the best quality grass specially for dogs and it doesn’t get too hot even with the high temps we had last summer …
 
You need to water profusely the place when he wees. It means you have to watch him each time but it worked for us. Alternatively teach him to wee in one place that doesn't matter. I believe there is a product you can purchase that goes in the water that is supposed to neutralise the wee, but honestly not a fan of them ingesting things like that. Has he started to cock his leg yet? When he does it will alleviate the patch problem.
 
I work in the turf industry and unfortunately there's not a lot you can do!

Esmae's ideas are probably the most sensible, and most likely to work.

The watering in needs to be done straight away, its too late by the evening. and if you are over seeding the burnt off area you need to dig out the area and turn over the soil before re seeding, ground temps need to be over 12 degrees consistently for seed to germinate, so this is maybe why you haven't seen any results in re-seeding over the winter.
 
Mine's a taller version of yours and he likes to wee on border plants rather than on the lawn - and he kills everything he wees on 😄 Best natural weedkiller in the world. I ended up putting a barrier across my garden so he has half of it to wee on/play in and I have half for my favourite plants (I love gardening too). He's a greyhound so reluctant to even step over a low barrier though, yours would be more likely to go straight over it I'm sure.
 
I have a whippet and also a keen gardener but our lawn doesn't suffer too much as our girl likes to do her toileting on walks. She has two walks a day, one first thing in the morning when she is most likely to want to 'go'. To be honest, the problem is likely to be at its worst at the moment due to the dry weather we are having.
 
Thanks everyone - interesting that it might get better when he cocks his leg. I never thought of that, I'm new to all this. What age does that start? He occasionally twists his hips and does a sideways wee (usually onto a front leg 😭) but no proper cocking just yet. Is the thinking that once he is cocking his leg he will be weeing onto something like a wall?

Also, is there a chance he'll do fewer wees when he is a little older and instead do fewer longers ones, ideally on walks (he has two a day)?

a bit of consolidation in the toilet department would be nice as he is still doing at least three poos a day! I have no idea if and when any of this changes.

I will mention these things to my husband to give him something to cling onto 😆
 
My boy wees a LOT on walks, as a scent marking thing, a little bit here and there - don't know if all boy dogs are like this but mine takes it very seriously!

Three poos a day sounds pretty normal, sighthounds have quite fast metabolism/digestion - mine does three a day, too. What you feed him could potentially make a difference, though, mine used to only do two when I fed solely raw, but he has a mixture of stuff now and is back up to three.
 
Penguin_Toes said:
Thanks everyone - interesting that it might get better when he cocks his leg. I never thought of that, I'm new to all this. What age does that start? He occasionally twists his hips and does a sideways wee (usually onto a front leg 😭) but no proper cocking just yet. Is the thinking that once he is cocking his leg he will be weeing onto something like a wall?

Also, is there a chance he'll do fewer wees when he is a little older and instead do fewer longers ones, ideally on walks (he has two a day)?

a bit of consolidation in the toilet department would be nice as he is still doing at least three poos a day! I have no idea if and when any of this changes.

I will mention these things to my husband to give him something to cling onto 😆
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Mine started to really cock their leg at about a year old. Before that it was haphazard. Mine wee to scent mark as well as needing to go. I've never counted wees to be honest. I do find that patchy lawns do recover in the wintertime when it is wetter generally. Unfortunately for me mine will never be the same after the digging games of one of my whippets. Last winter it looked like a scene from the 1st WW. !!
 
Don’t let him wee on your plants. (When he starts marking). Scout luckily wees where the bitches have been but if he heads to any plants he gets a no. He has one patch of weeds at the end of the hedge he’s allowed to cock on.
 
FIL trained his dog to wee in one place at the end of the garden. We didn't do that, but in spring and autumn, we cover the damaged areas in a light layer of compost which seemed to work better than re seeding, maybe because the lawn is large and the damage wasn't too bad. Last year was our first full season of using a robot lawn mower and this made a massive difference. The robot goes out daily and gently removes the grass tips which are scattered so finely back on the lawn, that you can't see it. This fertilises and retains moisture. Our lawn has been so much better with the robot.
 
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