Hi Lemmy, My HOA sent out a email saying dogs are no longer allowed on any grass in common areas or front yards including grass between sidewalk and curb which is… everywhere except our own tiny backyards. The reasoning is some dog urine effected dead spots. Honestly I didn’t even notice them, it’s 95° here and all the grass looks sad.
It’s a walking town and we are not a gated community, non-residents walk their dogs here all the time, so this rule can only punish those who live here and has no ability to effect others.
Anyway, this seems like a ‘we have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas!’ moment so I wanted to see if anyone here had any suggestions I can pass on to maintain a “good” curb appeal ground cover-wise while allowing dogs to do normal dog stuff.
I can converse with the HOA board in good faith, but this rule is basically banning dogs from the neighborhood - which I super did not sign up for.
Pertainent info: PA, USA - Town Home style homes - small central common grass - owned for 8y.
Edit: it seems like people may have glossed over the question part and skipped straight to HOA bashing (which is warranted at times!) so I will rephrase:
What ground covering or neighborhood solutions to similar (perceived) issues have other communities employed?
I’ve read some folks being a bottle of water on walks to dilute the pee so it’s less likely to ruin grass. But in fairness if some dog pee is ruining grass, owners are not watering their lawns enough. There are plenty of dogs in my neighborhood that are walked and I don’t think there are many pee spot issues.
But even better would be to not use grass :) uses too much water in the first place hehe
As someone not from the US. What in the world are you guys doing with your grass that makes it need watering and gets ruined by dog pee?
I have lived around dogs my entire life and never seen any grass get miscolourd by their pee.
I’d guess it’s the building cities in the inhospitable desert that does it.
Well that is definitely not helping.
Oh we we water it with bud light
That explains so much.
Brawndo has what lawns crave.
As someone not from the US, your pets probably aren’t fed horrible food options multiple times throughout the day. You (your fellows in general) probably got your pet knowing it wasn’t an ornament. And you probably don’t have grass that is so heavily genetically modified that it can’t filter the poison most of these animals piddle out. Yes, we get burn spots in lawns. Yes also, most of us are slowly killing our pets. Who has time to train an animal? Who has time to feed them a diet that is remotely in tune with their biology?
What are you talking about? The grass burns from dog pee because urine has nitrogen in it and the grass is over fertilized.