Your dog might be your best friend, but it’s not always your lawn’s best friend. Quite often customers ask why straw coloured patches are appearing on their lawns. The problem can be their best friend as the damage to the lawn is caused by the urea within the dog’s urine.
All dog’s urine contains urea, a form of organic nitrogen that converts to nitrates. Urea can actually be good for your lawn if used in low doses; in fact, it’s a component of many fertilisers. Besides nitrogen, urine also contains potassium and phosphorus, these are all essential components for healthy soil. However, dog urine contains a large amount of urea. When your dog urinates on your lawn it has such a strong concentrated level of nitrogen, that your grass will be destroyed leaving ugly patches of dead grass.
There are products on the market which claim to reduce the effect of dog urine on lawns, the feedback that we get from customers is mixed with regard to their effectiveness. One solution is to dilute the urine by quickly pouring a bucket of water over the area. If this is not practical, keeping the lawn moist by regular irrigation will help dilute the urine.
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