That Pet Blog That Pet Place Pet Blog
Dog Rocks: Lawn Urine Burn Preventative
If you have dogs and you like to keep a nice green lawn, you probably have tried every remedy in the book to prevent those unsightly urine burn patches in the area where your dog pees. There’s a new product in town that claims to prevent your dog’s urine from burning your lawn when used as directed.
Dog Rocks USA was kind enough to provide me with a sample of their product to try and review. Up front, let me tell you that I was skeptical that rocks could help me in my battle of the brown spots in my lawn. First, let me straighten a few things out:
Lawn burn cause by my boys’ leg lifting near the edge of my garden.
- Dog Rocks are not going to rid your lawn of existing urine spots, but is intended to prevent new spots. This is an important distinction.
- Dog Rocks do not change the pH of your dog’s urine (which can be harmful, especially to dogs with kidney disease)
- Diet also plays a key role in how many urine burn patches you have on your lawn. A diet very high in protein creates more nitrogen in your dog’s urine. Feed a high quality diet for the best results. Dog rocks will not alter the amount of nitrogen (nitrates) your dog produces naturally.
After that last point, you may be wondering how Dog Rocks work
Excess nitrates the cause of lawn burn; if these rocks don’t affect the amount of nitrogen your dog is producing, how can they prevent lawn burn? I’ll give you an excerpt straight from the Dog Rocks USA website:
“… Dog Rocks do not break down or leech anything into the pet’s drinking water. Dog Rocks provide a stable matrix and a micro porous medium in which active components are able to act as a water purifying agent … Dog Rocks will help purify the water by removing some nitrates, ammonia and harmful trace elements … the difference between too much nitrate that will kill the grass and the amount of nitrate that will be good for the grass is very small.”
In other words, the very trace amount of nitrates in your dog’s drinking water might be the difference between having lawn urine burn and not having lawn urine burn.
Other sources of nitrates that can exacerbate urine burn on your lawn include using fertilizer in the area where your dog pees or fertilizing your yard too often.
Ok, I already feed a high quality diet and I don’t use fertilizer on my lawn – These should be perfect for me. Are they? Did they really work? Stay tuned for my review (complete with before and after pictures) later this week!
