Pet-friendly rental homes are a growing segment of the Williston single-family rental home market. Pets are becoming very common nowadays, so property owners have come to allow them under certain conditions. Most pet-friendly rentals include a lawn that is designed with a pet’s safety in mind. But, other pets may see the lawn as a waste area, causing brown spots in different areas. To avoid spoiling your rental home’s lawn with pet urine, here are a few strategies recommended by lawn care experts.
What causes grass to turn brown is nitrogen — something that is abundant in dog urine. In small amounts, nitrogen is good for your lawn. Brown patches are evidence of too much nitrogen killing the grass. Avoid putting nitrogen-rich fertilizer in areas where your dog constantly urinates. You might be damaging the lawn more with your fertilizer if it has nitrogen in it, so be careful to either choose a nitrogen-free fertilizer or don’t apply fertilizer to the pet urine spots.
Another simple strategy is to rinse the lawn after your dog urinates on it. If your dog constantly urinates in the same place, this will be much easier. Regardless, spraying the lawn with water will help dilute the urine and prevent it from burning the grass.
Some dog owners have also found another approach to keeping their lawns healthy and green. That is, encouraging their pets to drink more water or giving them supplements designed to neutralize the nitrogen in their urine. By giving your dog more water, you’re diluting their urine. Be warned, though, that making dogs drink too much water could lead to unhealthy side effects, too. The alternative is to try pet-safe supplements designed to help minimize the damage to your lawn. Dietary supplements like these are said to bind with the nitrogen in your dog’s urine, making it less harmful to grass.
In closing, several pet owners have protected their rental home’s lawn from pet urine spots by training their dog to urinate in other areas. You could train your dog to urinate in certain spots of the yard that don’t have grass. This makes for a very sensible method, especially if your dog is receptive to consistent training. Some other options you could explore include fencing or a urine-resistant ground cover to create a dog-friendly place for them to pee. A small patch of clover, pea gravel, or even mulch could be all the prevention you need from your dog damaging a healthy, green lawn.
Good lawn maintenance can encourage a healthy lawn to be resistant to brown spots. But sometimes even careful tending and daily watering aren’t enough to prevent them. It would do you well to listen to the insight behind these strategies so that you can maintain in good condition your pet-friendly rental home and lawn. If you need help managing your pet-friendly rental or finding tenants, contact us online or call us at 802-861-6468 for a consultation.
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