How to neutralize dog urine on grass naturally

Many people with a dog and a garden will be able to recognise those tell-tale yellow patches where they’ve been to the toilet. Usually, it’s worse if you have a female dog (as males tend to prefer to cock their leg up against something at the side of the garden!), but both can kill your grass.

You’re unlikely to completely stop your dog from killing the grass, but there are some things you can do to lessen any damage.

Why does dog pee kill grass?

The first thing to know is that dog pee killing grass is completely natural. Because dogs naturally have nitrogen in their pee from the normal breakdown of proteins, when it hits the grass it can ‘burn’ the area they pee on. A common misconception is that the grass is damaged because of the pH (acidity) of the urine, but this is not true. On the bright side, the grass surrounding this will get extra nutrients from your dog’s pee so will probably start to look greener!

What can I do to stop my dog’s pee burning the lawn?

Although it’s hard to stop your dog’s pee harming your lawn completely, there are a couple of things you can try so it doesn’t have as big an impact:

• Water it down. When your dog pees on the grass, try to water it down as soon as they finish with a watering can or hose. This will help to dilute your dog’s pee and lessen the effects.
• Train them. You could use positive, reward-based training to teach your dog to pee in one specific spot. This means rewarding them when they go where you want them to, but ignoring it if they go anywhere else (you’ll probably want to water down these accidents!). Never punish your dog for peeing in the ‘wrong’ place as this could put them off peeing outside altogether!
• Consider getting a ‘pee post’. Some pet shops will sell posts you can stick in the ground to encourage male dogs to pee against them.
• Provide more water. It’s important anyway to always provide your dog with clean, fresh water and the better hydrated they are, the more watered down their pee will be naturally! You could also try adding water to their food, or feeding them a canned food that will dilute their pee further (though this may result in them needing to pee a lot more!)
• Take care of your lawn. Regularly watering and feeding your lawns (with something pet-safe!) will help to keep it in tip-top condition and mean that repairing pee damage from your dog is easier to do.
• Walking first thing. To minimise the damage to your lawn, you might want to take your dog for a short walk first thing in the morning so they can pee elsewhere. Just remember to take plenty of poo bags!  

Some people also section off their garden to make a designated toilet area for their dog, but again you’ll need to train your dog to use this area first!

Can supplements help?

We’d never recommend giving your dog anything that will upset the natural pH of their pee (which doesn’t help with the brown patches anyway). This could cause all sorts of problems – infections, bladder stones etc. It’s best to use one of the methods above to help stop urine scalding on the lawn as these methods will not harm your dog.

There are products available that claim to stop your dog’s pee killing your lawn without changing the pH of their urine, for example ‘dog rocks’. If you’re considering a product like this, we’d recommend researching it thoroughly first and reading the reviews. Again, avoid anything that will upset your dog’s natural pH or give them an upset stomach - you may want to have a chat with your vet before using these products.

And maybe consider that a few brown spots on the lawn are a small price to pay to see your pampered pooch enjoying your garden!

Share this article on:  PDSA Vets | 10 June 2020

Here at Envii, we know that dogs are one of the many special things that make a house feel more like home. Loyal and friendly in nature, how can anyone forget that they’re man’s best friend? These furry friends, however, can often leave a trail of their toilet trips where it’s least welcomed.

Dog owners think they’ve hit the jackpot when their pups are finally potty trained. It’s a joy to see their dogs taking themselves outdoors. Unfortunately, the joy is often short-lived when owners soon realise their dog’s urine is actually causing unattractive yellow patches to appear on the lawn.

Did someone say dog urine lawn burn? Yes, lawn burn is a widespread problem for a lot of dog owners.

Lawn burn is a consequence of your dog’s urine damaging the grass, leaving patches that are dead across the garden. Not to worry, there’s nothing particularly harmful about your dog’s urine. It’s not acidic as some misconceptions would have you believe. The problem is the nitrogen present in the urine.

Some of you might be wondering how nitrogen comes to be present in your dog’s urine? This occurs through the digestion of protein often consumed by dogs, who require it for a healthy and nutritious diet. Protein breaks down through a natural digestive process to produce nitrogen. Which is then disposed of from the body through waste in faeces and urine.

If any of you know a thing or two about gardening, you’d know that nitrogen is beneficial for plants and grass. If you read the label of many plant fertilisers, you should find they contain nitrogen of some form. This leaves to question, why on earth does the nitrogen in dog urine kill off the grass? While some nitrogen is good for lawns, in theory, dog urine tends to have a concentration that is too high for your lawn to cope with. Causing it to die off or at the very least be damaged.

So rather, the real problem lies in the level of nitrogen concentration dog urine contains.

Skip ahead and take a look at our most effective dog urine treatment – Envii Neuturine!

High nitrogen concentration isn’t the only cause of dog urine lawn burn. Other factors about the nature of dogs may worsen the problem…

The size of your dog could affect how much of an issue lawn burn is. Those of you with larger dogs such as a Great Dane, can expect to have worst burns covering a larger area. Because of course, your dogs can deposit larger amounts of urine in comparison to let’s say, a Yorkshire Terrier.

That’s not to say that small dogs don’t have an effect, they will cause the lawn to burn, nonetheless. Big or small dog, the problem is still there.

A common rumour that people often believe is that female dogs are the ultimate culprits of dog urine lawn burn. In reality, it doesn’t matter what gender your dog is, either will cause the lawn to burn. What is true and should be a consideration, however, is the differences in the way male and female dogs urinate.

As we all know, male dogs tend to lift their leg up and aim towards area/object when they pee. When they do this on grass, the urine is more likely to stay closer to the surface of the grass. Female dogs, on the other hand, pee in a squatting position. Meaning the urine will penetrate deeper into the grass, causing more severe burns in comparison to the way a male dog urinates.

Depending on how you see it, some dog owners are lucky or maybe unlucky enough to have a canine that always goes to the toilet in the same spot in the garden. If this is the case, knowing where the dog is going to pee makes treating that area so much easier. The bad news is that when dog urine is constantly encountering the same area, it damages the grass to a greater extent.

At this point, it might feel like there’s no way to win. Because when you think about it if your dog didn’t urinate in one spot, you would end up with lawn burn all over the garden. However, regardless of whatever preference you may have, this decision will ultimately always be up to the dog.

Baking soda seems to be the go-to solution for everything. Need to whiten your teeth? “use baking soda”. Got heartburn? “use baking soda”. Want to get rid of pet odour? “use baking –

Actually, we know a number of reasons why baking soda isn’t the best pet odour eliminator but that’s a whole other topic. The point is, it would be surprising to us if people still used baking soda for its intended purpose, you know, for baking!?

The fact people use baking soda as a solution for dog urine lawn burn seems like a reach to us. It supposedly prevents the grass from turning yellow. However, as we established before, lawns turn yellow because of the nitrogen concentration in your dog’s urine. Baking soda can’t neutralise Nitrogen. It’s not going to save or protect your grass.

In fact, baking soda may cause more damage than good. Because in essence, it is a salt (sodium bicarbonate), which plants are well known for not reacting well to.

Another ‘wise tale’ passed around is to use tomato juice to alter the pH of the dog’s urine to prevent lawn damage. The myth to go along with this solution is that dog urine is too acidic, therefore that’s what causes the grass to burn.

The idea is, in order to combat the ‘acidity of dog’s urine’, simply supplement things like tomato juice, apple cider vinegar and vitamin c into your dog’s diet and the problem is solved.

However, just as with the baking soda, all these remedies don’t deal with the real problem of high nitrogen concentrations. Not to mention we would highly advise against tampering with your dog’s health and diet with hear-say hacks. Ultimately, it’s not the pH of the dog’s urine that kills the grass, so it’s not worth putting your dog through all this hassle.

Leaving lawn burn isn’t detrimental to your lawn, however, the grass will eventually degrade and you will be left with soil patches. Treating urine lawn burn is the better solution to encourage healthy regrowth once re-seeded.