What You Need To Know About Grass and Dogs

Before getting my dogs, I had grand designs on what my backyard garden was going to look like. It was going to be an oasis. My sanctuary. Green and lush. Grass and plants.

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Dreaming Big

Moving into my house about a year and a half ago, it was already the end of summer. My backyard had virtually no gardens and was hardscaped with patio stones and river stones. I hated it. To me, it was a blank slate though, which I was eager to tackle once spring came around.

Enter Grace. She didn’t mind so much that there was no grass. It was the middle of winter anyways when she came home, and anyone who knows Berners knows that they LOVE the cold weather and snow. She played hard in the snow, and then Benson came home on April 1st.

I really didn’t give much thought as to how the dogs were going to influence my gardening design though. Wanting grass and gardens as soon as it was warm enough I was out in the yard ripping up the patio stones. The dogs took this as a sign that they were to help and dug holes all around the yard anytime a new patch of dirt opened up!

Spring Means Sod Time!

Ignoring what should have already been obvious, I ordered one of those giant bags of topsoil and sod. The giant bag of dirt came first, and since I live on a slight rise from the street with no driveway I hauled that bag of dirt to the backyard one bucket at a time…It took a while before it was delivered, so we lived through the mud pit in the yard and floors that were never, ever clean!

Then the sod finally arrived!!! I was SO excited! No more stinky mud pit! Cleaner floors! Green in the yard! My first mistake here was in how much I ordered. I don’t have a very big yard, and two full palettes of the stuff showed up on the sidewalk in front of my house! Multiples of what I needed…Hauling it all up to my yard, using what I needed and giving a substantial amount away.

Everyone was soooooo excited to have grass in the backyard! Both dogs were out lying on it and playing on it. It looked amazing. Exactly what I had envisioned for the space! It was going to be a great summer!

The First Cracks In My Plan Appear

My optimism got the best of me, however. It didn’t take long before the first brown spots appeared. No big deal right? Just water it down and throw some seed on, right?

I think it took about a month before the majority of the grass had turned yellow. I was devastated. Getting back online and ordering all kinds of grass seed I spent too much time raking, planting, fencing it off…only for it to die again pretty much immediately upon contact with my dogs.

If I had a bigger yard I wouldn’t have minded so much. But being in the Beaches area of Toronto, my yard is relatively small. Add two very large dogs with the ability to urinate an amount equivalent to a small pond and the result was inevitable.

The Final Attempt

A final attempt was made in early August before I went home for summer vacation. I was going to be gone for two and a half weeks and thought this should be sufficient for a good start before we all got back. Since I was taking the dogs with me (I rented an RV and was driving back to Saskatchewan) it would be undisturbed.

The first thing my daughter said to me when we got back home from our crazy road trip was “Wow Mom, look at the grass!”. It was long, lush, and needed to be cut even!

It may have taken a whole week before it looked like that last attempt was going to be another epic failure. I gave up watering. I gave up seeding. Thinking to myself “Next year I’ll give it a try again”. As one friend said to me recently “You were obsessed with that grass!”

Indeed I was. I was devastated that nothing had worked. I had seriously underestimated the power of my dogs urine on my little backyard oasis.

Exploring The Options

A couple months ago, I started turning my thoughts back to what I was going to attempt come spring. The snow was melting, and I was left with an extremely muddy and stinky yard. I was thinking of the ways I could barricade off the yard, give the dogs enough space to go to the bathroom and get my grass growing again. I contemplated having a professional come in and install sod again.

One day when the snow melted enough to clean up the poop landmine field I grabbed a few rolls of poop bags, donned my bright green rubber boots and waded out into the muck. The first thing that hit me was the SMELL. And it wasn’t just the poop smell, but the urine that had saturated the ground over the course of the winter. My backyard smelled like an outhouse!

It was right around this time that I came up with the inevitable conclusion that given the size of my backyard and the size of my dogs, there was about no way that real grass would have had any kind of a chance in that battle. As I look out at it right now, there are two spots about the size of my fist that actually made it through the winter.

Time For Turf

Since I love to garden and grow things, hardscaping again was not an option that I even wanted to consider even though I still have all the patio stones piled up in my shed. I was not admitting total defeat that easily. I did some research on urine resistance grass types. As well, I did research on other types of greenery that could be used instead of grass. If you are considering this route, here are some options for dog friendly ground cover that you can consider.

Every time I ventured out to the yard, however, the smell hit me reminding me that the dirt itself was so saturated with urine at this point that there was no likely way that anything planted back there would stand even a minute chance of survival. I would just be committing more poor plants to a sure death.

Although I initially hated the thought of it, I came to a decision that if I wanted green, I was going to have to go the fake route. I started to research again.

Baby, You’ve Come A Long Way!

Fake turf for homes and pets had just been in its infancy when I had my pug, Nemo. You couldn’t find it in Ontario. We had a loft style condo with a deep terrace and a drain on the floor but since it faces south the concrete would heat up to the point the little guy couldn’t even go out there. We ordered it from British Columbia, and the roll was shipped to us on the train.

It was that experience that had soured me on the whole synthetic grass thing. It was expensive, and it got almost as hot as the concrete in the sun, and it stunk.

Getting online, however, I realized that turf has come a very long way from those early days! It is far more realistic looking than it used to be and came in a variety of types. I reached out to get more information with some local contractors even though there was still a certain amount of skepticism going on in my mind.

Finding The Right Contractor

The emails started coming back in, and I was really surprised at what I was seeing. My yard would be dug down and graded. There would be a layer of stone for drainage. And there would be a layer of fill for odor absorption and cushion under the “grass”. The seams would be glued, and the edges secured with spikes. I decided to see some samples.

To make it a bit shorter, I ended up signing the contract to put the turf down in my yard. My neighbours a few houses down (who also recently got a new dog) also decided to put it down in their yard after talking with me.

The ground is now almost thawed. Every spring rain brings a new day of mud challenges. I am now eagerly awaiting my turf as I am desperate to have floors even somewhat clean. My yard is pretty shaded in the summer, so the “grass” should not heat up as it would in direct sunlight. It won’t be real, but hey, it WILL be green! Stay tuned…