Urine burns on your lawn

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 by Elle Woloszuk 0 Comments

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Most of us who have dogs have experienced the frustration of finding an unsightly burn spot on our perfectly groomed and fertilized green lawn. We love our dogs, but can do without the urine burn spots on our lawns. There are many “theories” about what causes these spots such as urine that is too acidic. The cause of these burn spots that result from dog urine is not the acidic level of your dog’s urine, but rather, that the nitrogen level in your dog’s urine is high.

Dogs are carnivores and when the high level of protein that they consume is digested, they break down the protein and excrete it as nitrogen in their urine. The protein is broken down in your dog’s body, and nitrogen is a bi-product of this process. It is the same nitrogen that we place on our lawns as fertilizer, but at a higher concentration.

If you fertilize your lawn, the burns may be worse because your dog is depositing nitrogen on top of nitrogen that you have applied.

Burns are worse on lawns with large female dogs because female dogs deposit urine in one spot.

Burns are worse on lawns with large dogs because they deposit more urine than smaller dogs.

Here are some tips to combat these urine burns:

• Give your dog more water to dilute their urine
• Feed your dog a high grade dog food so that the protein is processed with less nitrogen as a bi-product
• Water your lawn regularly to dilute urine that has been deposited on your lawn
• Feed your dog a supplement that neutralizes the nitrogen in your dog’s urine