Outdoor dog potty area? Fencing?

[kdow]

In preparation for getting another large dog, I’m trying to get our backyard sorted out. We need new fencing and I would also like to install a dog ‘potty’ area to give the dog a specific place to ‘go’ in the yard so the entire lawn isn’t dotted with minefields. (Also, past large dogs have been pretty unthrilled with going in the yard in general since I don’t have a large area - city house - and they seemed to prefer a corner as far from the house as possible when they HAD to do it. So I figure if I’m potty training a puppy anyway, I can train it that a specific corner is ‘ok’ if we don’t have time for a proper walk.)

So I have two questions:

1. Best fencing? I usually see chain link, but that isn’t the most attractive thing in the world and we could use some privacy, especially along the back of the property. Chain link combined with privacy fencing panels in key places? There is a fence but it’s awful - my old dog and my parents current cocker spaniel (who visits often) don’t challenge the fence so it didn’t matter that the current fence wouldn’t hold up if you blew on it hard, but I can’t assume a puppy will be the same way, particularly a large breed. (Lab, something like that.)

2. Size of dog potty area? I’m thinking to dig up an area and fill it with gravel and sand or something, for drainage, then top it with I’m not sure what - I was thinking maybe artificial turf, actually, since my dogs seem to not like to pee on stuff that splatters but I don’t want to have to mow grass in the potty area. Artificial turf could just be hosed off. But I can’t figure out how large to make it so it’s big enough for the dog to use comfortably but not so large it takes over the whole yard. (I plan to screen it somehow also - possibly just a trellis with some planting. Just enough so it isn’t screamingly obvious that there’s a dog toilet in the corner. ) 3’ x 3’? 4’ x 3’?

[S1969]

I’ve never heard of anyone actually building a dog potty yard, so i’ll be curious to hear what others say. Even when I lived in a city, my dog preferred to do his business while out on a walk, so that’s just what we did. We call them “motion-activated poopers.”

I know at dogs shows many dogs go to the bathroom in x-pens, and have been trained to do so, but I’m not sure that it is because they know to go in the x-pen, or if they just don’t get to go anywhere else (e.g. not going to get a walk, so might as well go now).

As for fencing it really depends on what you want to look at. A lot of people don’t like chain link because their dogs will see (and therefore may bark at) the neighbors. I have chain link at my house because I want to be able to see past the fence, not look at it.

[Bicoastal]

[QUOTE=kdow;8284824]
IArtificial turf could just be hosed off. But I can’t figure out how large to make it so it’s big enough for the dog to use comfortably but not so large it takes over the whole yard. (I plan to screen it somehow also - possibly just a trellis with some planting. Just enough so it isn’t screamingly obvious that there’s a dog toilet in the corner. ) 3’ x 3’? 4’ x 3’?[/QUOTE]

My experience with artificial turf is in training facilities. I suspect it will hold stank. Depending on what’s underneath, it won’t drain well. It will get ripped up. Crushed stone will have better drainage.

For size, you would have to clean (I mean scoop & disinfect) the potty area daily to keep such a small place clean enough for the dog to use it daily and control bugs and odor.

<shrug> I dunno. I think it’d be easier to train your puppy to use a certain corner of the yard, scoop it daily, and mow like normal.

[bits619]

Neighbors of mine when I was a kid had two labs and set up a potty area with either crushed rock or pea gravel. It worked well for them but it was a different set up than you’re proposing. They converted their side yard in the back. That way they would let them out the side yard door, wait for them to go, then let them into the big yard. So they didn’t have to escort the dogs to the proper area each time which made it more convenient. Also the size of the area was a lot bigger than you’re saying,… I’d guess it was 20x20’. Plenty of room to get them moving, like s1969 says, which does speed up the process.

I have a small yard area I’ve fenced in myself, it’s U shaped around one end of my house, and I’d say it’s two sections 10x8 feet and the third is 10x5. I pickup every week but by the time to do it again he doesn’t like being near the other messes and will start to go right by the entrance of the yard to avoid it. An area that small would never work for him as he needs room to run around like a loon looking for the best spot, and then I’d have to pick up every time, just to get him into the space again!

Like bicoastal I’d just train a dog to to out to the corner, and later hope for a majority rate of compliance

[arapaloosa_lady]

I could see you training a dog to urinate primarily on the gravel patch, but it would be much harder to use a small area for defecation.

And I’d do some research on how to best drain the area. We have a gravel area for the dogs, and it reeks to high heaven on hot days. (not my property, can’t fix). It drains well but I think you’d have to spray it with water to get rid of the odor on the hot days. I was reading about a guy who did a similar set-up with a tarp on a slope leading into a pipe under the gravel so he could “flush” the doggie toilet area.

I like solid privacy fencing for dogs. It’s nice not to have to deal with any barking issues (from your dogs or dogs passing by) or kids sticking their arms through. I’ve never seen anyone alternating with chain link, although some people have different types of fences along different sides of the yard.

[TrotTrotPumpkn]

I had a bunch of kennel panels and live on a farm (privacy isn’t a big issue), so what we did is use six panels and make a big dog run off our garage side door. There are exterior doors built into almost all the panels (they came from a commercial kennel). The area was under a deck we tore out, so was already covered in gravel. I do have to add gravel every year. I like the angular much more than pea gravel, fyi.

There are commercial sprays you can buy to disinfect and clean the area. I don’t use it much in the summer, but I like it in the winter. Of course now I bought a big truck and it takes up the entire garage, so we can’t get to the dog run with the truck in there. So until we add on to the garage, which is the plan, it is useless unless I need to kennel a dog for a bit while we are outside.

You can use whatever fencing you want, but dogs can chew through a wood fence pretty quickly. Do you want to solely use it for peeing? You may want to put down a barrier before the gravel so the dog can’t dig to freedom.

I also know someone who has about 5 dogs and fenced in a grass patch. This also leads to the bigger yard (it’s just for bathroom). She cleans it immediately and it has a sprinkler system, so it stays grass.

[kdow]

Mix of fencing would probably be per side of yard, if done. (Ex. The back of the yard kind of looks over into the house on the next street over, so I could see a privacy fence being desirable there, but on the sides privacy fence might make the space feel a bit claustrophobic, so chain link may be better there.) It might be cheaper and easier to just do one kind of fence and do something else for privacy, though. (Like the privacy strips in chain link and then some planting that will grow up/along the fence for an added sense of privacy, and because those privacy strips are kind of ugly.)

The potty area would be primarily for urination (you know, first thing in the morning or last thing at night) and only for defecation on the odd days in the winter when it’s really not safe to go on a decent walk. (Very hilly where I am.) But I would expect most significant potty activity to happen while walking as ime large dogs don’t like to go near the house anyway if they can avoid it. I was thinking to avoid grass in part because it is one more area to mow and the urine often makes grass look bad anyway, plus if there is poop to be picked it can be difficult to get it up from grass if it is other than nicely formed, as does happen from time to time. I suppose some kind of mulch might also work to provide splatter protection? Though artificial turf seems easiest to remove and replace if it does get really gross.

Good point about the smell. My housemate is a big geek so we could probably have some kind of sprinkler system that activated to help rinse the area as often as necessary depending on other factors like weather, etc. (He’d probably enjoy the challenge of writing control software to look at things like weather and frequency of use, he’s weird.) That wouldn’t work in the winter (hose/pipes would risk freezing) but we’d have a lot of snow and moisture anyway, which might help. (We get a lot of cycling of temps in the winter, so the snow often melts within a few days.)

If it was just me I probably wouldn’t bother, but my housemates are kind of weirded out by the idea that some of the grass in the backyard may have been omg peed on! So I am considering a potty corner as a compromise. (Meanwhile I’m sure the rabbits and whatever else we have around - we have an impressive amount of wildlife for a city - is gleefully peeing all over the place. But I suppose that is easier to put out of mind than a dog you might actually see stop to pee?)

[threedogpack]

I use a potty pen for my dogs. It was a 16 x 8 chain link kennel that I found on sale. I put down bricks for a pathway from my back door to the pen so it does not get muddy (and thus muddy paws coming into the house). So the potty pen got set up, and at first I tried just grass, but at the time I had 3 intact male dogs that had to pee over each other & it got stinky fast. To counter the smell, I put ½ cap full of laundry detergent in a pump hand sprayer, filled to the top with water and sprayed the areas they used. The detergent will not harm your grass, but it kills the bacteria and thus the odor. It will also work on concrete or brick. Must be repeated as necessary, I found 1 or 2 times a week was sufficient. However, the constant foot traffic killed the grass quickly so I experimented with bedding and the stuff I found worked best was the compressed sawdust pellets used for horse bedding. It’s cheap (around $6 for a 40# bag in my area), covered the area well, compacted down so the feces stayed on top and were easy to rake onto a shovel or (for large breed dogs) easy to pick up with a stall fork. I left the bedding down and put fresh on top once a week-ish. I spread an entire bag at a time. Eventually the bedding under would compost, making excellent drainage. About the third or fourth year in, the layers of bedding needed to be reduced, so I dug it up and composed the sawdust. I’ve probably been doing this for 6 or 7 years now and it’s worked well for me.

[tarheelmd07]

Here’s a blog post from some folks who built a “pee pit” for their dogs in their chicago backyard:
http://www.yellowbrickhome.com/2014/08/12/jack-ccs-pee-pit/