Claudia I would highly reccommend applying gypsum powder to the areas where pup is unrinating. If you do this often enough, it should correct any damaged areas. Hit the urine spots up early and you maybe able to avoid reseeding. Also if you have an irrigation system, let it run longer in where your pup goes to the bathroom, this will help breakdown the sodium deposits that cause the grass to go brown.

Becky wrote:

Claudia I would highly reccommend applying gypsum powder to the areas where pup is unrinating. If you do this often enough, it should correct any damaged areas. Hit the urine spots up early and you maybe able to avoid reseeding. Also if you have an irrigation system, let it run longer in where your pup goes to the bathroom, this will help breakdown the sodium deposits that cause the grass to go brown.

Thanks Becky!

Maybe it's because we've had so much rain lately, but...since I increased ACV for Ginger and Storm, we don't have any new burn spots and the rest have been growing in quite nicely.

I'll have to revisit the lawn again in the next couple of months when there's not that much rain...

Well, I think I'll be getting gypsum powder...we're still getting burn spots where they are peeing. Not as much, but we're still seeing them.

Becky - do I sprinkle gypsum powder over where they pee right after they're done?

Any clue where to GET it? LOL.

I believe you can get it at Home Depot or any gardening supply store.

Lowe's looked at me like I had four heads....

Koda wrote:

Lowe's looked at me like I had four heads....

Ooops...then landscaping places should know what it is.

Koda wrote:

Lowe's looked at me like I had four heads....

oh man that gave me a laugh! many of a times have i gotten that stare from them!!!!

Is there a down side to those tablets that you'd give your pets to prevent burn spots?

cmanding wrote:

Is there a down side to those tablets that you'd give your pets to prevent burn spots?

Claudia, I looked into the following about a month ago...

Huskyluv wrote:

I looked into those treats and pills like "Green Um", "Grass Saver", and "Dog Rocks". After more digging around for info on these products, what they do, and their ingredients, they are not something that I would feel comfortable giving my dogs or recommending whether they work or not.

Now I feel bad that I can't remember what the ingredients were and why I didn't feel comfortable with them so all I can say is that you know I'm a holistic/homeopathic type person when it comes to my pets. If I wouldn't feel comfortable giving them to my own dogs, of course I would not recommend them for other people to use but not everyone is as...how shall I say this nicely..."picky" as me. Using chemical products to bind nitrogen in the urine may work but it's not something I will use on my dogs or I defeat the whole purpose of holistic care. lol I just worry about the long term effects of unnatural things being fed to our dogs just for aesthetics (i.e. a green lawn). I would never look down upon or think ill of anyone who did but it's not for me. Sorry to go on rambling. Of all the things I looked up, the only thing I would have considered trying is the "Dog Rocks" that you place in the dogs' water bowl but those got mixed reviews so I did my own thing.

Since I trained Dakota to pee in a small area about 3' x 3' that is covered in pinestraw we have not had any more burned grass in the yard thankfully! Saves my yard AND I don't have to give him unnatural ingredients or chemicals.

Yea- I'm not so comfortable with them either. Those tablets change the natural PH of your dog's urine. It just doesn't feel right to me to put unnecessary stress on their liver and kidneys just to make my yard look pretty. I have no problems treating the lawn, but aside from natural supplements, I don't feel comfortable treating my dogs.

I looked at the ingredients, and saw one label saying that's what it does - change the pH of your pets urine - which I did not like. And all these chemical sounding ingredients, except for beef flavor or something similar didn't sound all that good.

Hubby is just getting tired of 'maintaining' the small yard we have.

Time for plan B....

Hey, you guys wanted dogs! Gotta take the good with the bad!

What's Plan B?

Claudia - we're considering getting a "pee post" to put out in our yard and training Nikolai to use that... I too have major reservations about the lawn-saver style supplements. Just doesn't sit right with me, either.

We did, and we have 2 wonderful dogs and we wouldn't have it any other way, except for a nice lawn in the back yard, but we'll take the dogs over that!!

Plan B starts out with trying to find Gypsum Powder and continue with ACV since it has other health benefits...then I'm hoping I can train them to go down the side of the house where there's river rocks bordering a breeze walk path...or I'll just have to water down where they pee...


I've seen those 'pee posts' but maybe I need to look at it closer...

Yep, the pee posts smell awful but you can put them in the ground where you want the dogs to pee and that should help with training them to potty in a certain spot. Dakota was super easy to train, I just walked him over to his pee spot and said potty. When he started peeing I'd say "good boy" calmly and when he finished he got a ton of excited praise and attention. It's been 6 weeks that we've been doing this and I still do the "good boy" and lots of praise every single time just to reinforce it. It's so funny, you'd think I was house training a puppy or something...same concept but it works!

Ditto here! G&S still get praise (and/or affection) when they do anything I ask...I don't think I'd ever stop

I have yet to find gypsum powder anywhere, BUT here's something that does work great!



It has gypsum in it, along with mulch and seed. This, along with ACV mixed in with their food, has helped up maintain our lawn! A little pricey, but it has helped us repair the really bad burn spots allowing grass to grow back fast.

Nice find.

Huskyluv wrote:

Yep, the pee posts smell awful but you can put them in the ground where you want the dogs to pee and that should help with training them to potty in a certain spot. Dakota was super easy to train, I just walked him over to his pee spot and said potty. When he started peeing I'd say "good boy" calmly and when he finished he got a ton of excited praise and attention. It's been 6 weeks that we've been doing this and I still do the "good boy" and lots of praise every single time just to reinforce it. It's so funny, you'd think I was house training a puppy or something...same concept but it works!

We bought a pee post last weekend, and when I took G&S out to potty (before I left for Utah), I would make them follow me to the pee post and ask them to potty. G&S would look up at me, sit and smile and I figured they didn't need to go, but as soon as I took 2 steps away from the pee post, they would walk around and then pee in in yard away from the pee post.

I need to work on this a little more with them when I get back.

Aww, that's too funny! Definitely be persistent and work on the training, they'll get it eventually. I got lucky with Dakota, he took to the pee training almost instantly. A few months later he is so incredibly reliable it's mind boggling. Every time we go in the backyard I don't have to say or do a thing, he goes straight to his normal pee spot, pees, and then off he goes to play or do whatever he wants.

So, I think we found the key to keeping our lawn green with minimal burn spots without having to buy a lot of the EZSeed Repair product!

Since August, we've managed to keep the urine burn spots to 2-3 mild spots at most! And we haven't bought EZSeed Repair for a while!

Here's what we do:

ACV (with the Mother) in their food - Storm gets 2 tbsp and Ginger gets 1 tbsp. I break this up over 2 meals in their THK so it's watered down.

For the burn spots that do happen, we rake out the dead grass and use the EZSeed Repair product. It works fast in re-growing grass in the bald spots.

To minimize burn spots from happening, we use Revive every 3 weeks, and we've set our sprinklers for the back yard to go off for 2 minutes during the day 3 times a day!

That's it! Watering more often for very short periods helps tremendously in diluting the urine enough to prevent majority of the burn spots from happening!

Since we've started this in the beginning of August, we've noticed only 2-3 burn spots at any given time, instead of the 5-6 spots we used to have!