Yard covering and dogs
 

Hi everyone,
I have a CYV and a big dog. When we moved in we replaced a bit of rock with grass for the dog to do her business. Except for first thing in the morning, she thinks the yard is not the place to go and wants to go out front on the neighbors pine mulch. Plus because she does go on the grass in the morning, it is not growing very well in spots. We are thinking of pulling up all the bushes and replacing the medium sized rock in our CYV with something else for her and to give her more room as there are bushes everywhere. What seems to be your dogs favorite thing to go on? Does anyone have all pine mulch in their courtyard and if so, how does it look? Does it make the yard look "dingy"? Do you get a lot of weeds through it? We are also trying to be a little frugal because we also have to redo all the flooring inside the house as well so we are looking for cheaper alternatives for the outside. Any ideas?

Curious how the dog gets out of the fence to the neighbor's yard...
I gave up a fence to get a view. It's my responsibility to disallow her to go on other's property. I have some pine straw, not mulch, in front and she's ok with that for a whiz, but prefers to go off site for pooping.
I have a suggestion: ask other neighbors with dogs to have an agreement that you use each other's yards, after your dogs have done the first grass-killing pee in their own yard.

My dog loves to go on the pine straw! He will only poop in a place where other dogs have been. That is my worry if I were to get a CYV. I guess I would have to invite some dogs over to "christen" the courtyard :)

Just be careful about using pine straw -- there are frequently ticks in it. That being said, I think pine straw is a dog's second-favorite material for pooping (first being the one neighbor who would really object to a dog using their lawn). The other thing they seem to like is the low-growing ivy-type covering (which is a royal pain to try to clean up).

When I first moved here, my neighbor had a lovely older dog which he had trained, yes trained, to go on a square of sand in the back yard surrounded with trimmed bushes. I guess it was easy for him to clean off the sand and replace with new. But, when you think about it most dogs have their own special "place" to go, so if you could get him/her used to one space you could put in a sand box. I imagine it would take walking your poor dog around and around until the bladder was about to burst - after that first time it would be plain sailing or plain peeing.

Pine straw can have tics in it when it is new. We always kept our Golden off of it for the first month after The Villages installed a new top coat. Our vet would give us a call when they started to see tic cases rise.

The dog doesn't get out of the fence to use the neighbor's yard, I'm just saying that when she is out front of our house she always tries to go over there and I always have to redirect her back to me. She seems drawn to pine straw.
I know she doesn't like rock-I don't even like walking on it so I can't expect her to do it. The idea of a little sandbox area is sounding creative to me because I don't like the idea of bringing ticks into my yard with pine straw. I have cats that are in the lanai and the ticks could very easily get to them too. So, what do the dogs seem to like walking on besides grass and pine straw so I have an idea of what to put in the area leading to the sandbox? Do any of your dogs like to walk on the pea pebbles? Anything else?

Mine usually do their thing downtown, they seem to be drawn to the wood mulch.

Try synthetic grass. Lowes and HD both offer it.

My neighbor made their dog's sandbox in the area of the electrical boxes in the backyard. They had grass, so the dog would walk on the grass into the sandy area which was surrounded with trimmed bushes. The dog was on a long leash which was fixed in the lanai and long enough to walk around the yard, so he would just sort of lead her into the sandbox and then she could walk in the yard on the fixed leash.