If you’ve owned a dog for a while, you know how difficult it can be to keep your yard looking fresh on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. If you’ve ever tried to do any yard beautification projects or landscaping with dogs making any kind of progress impossible, you know the struggle of trying to encourage your pet’s happiness and keep your yard looking halfway decent. Fortunately, you don’t have to struggle with this anymore. There are tons of ways to keep your yard looking healthy and green without limiting your pet’s playtime. Doing a massive cleanup is going to require more than hiring a pooper scooper service for your yard (though that certainly helps.) You’ll need to create a system that allows your dogs to know what to expect, and you’ll need to stay current with a basic cleanup schedule. Ready to get your yard back into shape? Here are a few things you can do to fix and prevent lawn damage from dogs.

Plant New Grass

Before you embark on your project, you first have to assess the damage. If you have a larger dog and a larger yard, you’ll probably be more worried about picking up waste and keeping the yard clear of huge piles of excrement. If you have a smaller dog, however, the issue of browning or yellowing grass can also be a huge problem. If your dog has already “marked” the yard by peeing all over it, the first thing to do is figure out how to section off the most damaged area and start planting new grass there. This may prove tricky since dogs aren’t fans of being blocked off from areas. However, installing a gate or using a long piece of wire to create a wraparound fence structure will help you nourish and treat your damaged grass without worrying about your dog wreaking even more havoc on your yard. First, try raking up some of the more damaged areas and planting seeds so that new grass can grow. This may take time to yield results, but eventually, you’ll have your yard restored to its uniform greeness.

Use Limestone

Another helpful way to effectively erase dog urine stains is to treat the area with limestone. Since dog pee is highly acidic, it will end up burning through or discoloring your grass in time. To fight this problem, you’ll need to fight fire with fire, using limestone to restore your yard to a healthy state. Start by sectioning off and watering the areas with the most damage. After you’re done, remove the dead grass and sprinkle a handful of limestone in the area. You can find this at almost any hardware store, and you don’t need to use a lot to start seeing results. After a while, the limestone’s acidic qualities will create a more neutral environment in your soil. This will make it far easier for you to plant new grass in the damaged area. While it might be time-consuming to do this in every area your dog has ruined, it’s helpful to start with a few serious yellow patches or eyesores and continue with the work over time. Before you know it, your yard will have undergone a full facelift.

Stick to a Walk Schedule

One way of making sure your yard doesn’t get the brunt of the damage is to keep your dog to a strict walking schedule. While your dog will need to have his outdoor playtime, he can at least be trained to expect specific walk times when he’ll need to do his business. If your dog doesn’t have a schedule, he won’t know that it’s wrong to go in the yard, and you’ll have a much harder time teaching him. When he starts to understand that walks are the time to go to the bathroom, it will be less tempting to go on the lawn. He’ll know that being let out into the yard is only for playtime purposes, not an excuse to water to lawn.

Clean Up When You Can

The most basic way of keeping your yard free of damage is to keep an eye on your pet at all times. When he’s outside playing, make sure you have a poop bag or scooper handy so that you can clean up after your pet the instant he goes. This won’t just make it easier to remember where your dog went and avoid stepping in a pile of waste, it will reduce the damage caused by solid waste, which also has harmful elements in it that can end up attacking your grass and creating an unhealthy lawn. Let your dog have free reign of the yard, but make sure you know exactly when and where he’s going if you want to keep your yard looking beautiful.