Lawn aggghhhhh!!!!!

Hi everyone, have just joined this site and am looking forward to chatting with you about our doggy issues. I was wondering if anyone had any advise on how to rectify our poor lawn. The drainage is awful and the grass has turned into a muddy mess. I know when you have dogs a great garden is very unlikely, however my kitchen floor is looking like a swamp The house is rented so a little reluctant to spend loads of money.... ideas please

We have ours pathed other than the sides which have shrubs, but we still have mud plastered on the kitchen floor when its wet Im on my third mophead since beginning of December

Im afraid when its like this we fence ours off and we dont allow them on it,there is plenty of hard standing for them.Sorry I havnt ant suggestions

Mine is paved but you obviously can`t do that. Fencing would be the only solution tbh. Then you can work on the drainage when it`s dried out. You could try adding lawn sand and also pricking it?

You need to aerate the lawn this time of yr.... (spike it) it will help with the drainage and allow air to cerculate ,

Heres a link explainignthe benifits .

http://www.lawn-craft.co.uk/aeration.html

I can understand your reluctance to spend money on a rental property but in the event of your leaving it, you would probably have to re-instate the garden as you found it so maybe a chat with the Landlord would offer a solution?

A low budget fence or trellis which would be easy to remove when you leave, would be a quick and effective solution. My dogs only have the patio and the yard down the side of the house in the winter. The first year we were here they turned the garden into a swamp. You also have the additional problem of them walking the mud into your rented house.

I felt a bit guilty about keeping them off the garden at first but they don't seem bothered, as they get plenty of off lead exercise. My GSP does not suffer anything in silence and if he felt hard done by......I would know!

My lawn is a beautiful lawn (returfed about 4 years ago), BUT, at the moment, it's half mud and very, very wet. It was the same this time last year and I was thinking about returfing it again, but come the Spring you will find that it will be totally back to normal even if you do very little to it.

I don't let my dogs out there much in the winter, especially if it's just rained, and that helps (a bit!). If it's possible that you can keep them off it when it starts growing again in April, it should come back to life, grass always comes back if you leave it alone. Even the muddiest corner of a cow's field will always get covered with grass again once the cows are moved on, so that tells you how resiliant grass is.

You could get some lawn dressing, mix in some seed and scatter it, but not yet, wait until March when the temperature risis, coz I think it needs to have at least 11deg before it grows. You could even fertilise it at that time, but you'll have to be careful what you get because of the dogs, some of it is not very pet friendly, but the seeding is ok.

I'd be inclined to take the dogs out a bit more, let them have their zoomies when out, so there's less chance they'll be doing it when you get home.

Indoors, I put big towels down on the carpet to keep it mud free, but by the sounds of it, you'll be forever washing them if the dogs are in and out. Wear them out outdoors and hopefully your grass will survive for the Spring

Edited, posted in error.

thats what we do