Creating a dog-friendly yard

Our American Bulldog - Tug

After much frustration with having a SUPER small back yard (think housing development where you can see in everyone's yards from your window) and a bigger dog who does need to go potty and therefor not being able to use our back yard at all I finally began researching ways to fix this problem.  Some things I was looking for:

• A good spot that was out of the way for us, but easily accessible for our dog.
• Easy to clean up and maintain
• Drained well (I live in rainy Washington, so LOTS of rain)
• Reduced the odor

After lots of looking around online, I decided to go with a sand base, topped with river pebbles.  These are a little larger than pea gravel and would allow the water to drain well and would be easy to hose off and keep clean.  It would also be fairly easy to poop-scoop regularly. 

I started by finding the best location in our yard for his area.  I dug down about an inch or two, also trying to level out the area as it was pretty sloped.   I purchased some cedar edging and placed it around the borders to keep the filler material in place better.  Next, I poured in sand, then topping it with the rock. 

After laying the rock

We need to still add some more rock as my calculations were a bit off, but it's a good start.  Our next task was to re-train our dog to go potty just in this area.  Our dog is super sensitive so we had to be careful in how we trained him to go over there so he wouldn't be scared. (such a big baby)  Reading other blogs gave us a good idea of how to do this.  We would take him out at first on a leash when he had to go.  Each time he went potty we would get super excited, praise him, and give him a treat.  He got the peeing down really well, but for some reason did NOT want to poop there.  I do have to say, two months later he still does not want to poop there, so I'm not sure what that's all about or how to change it.  He knows that's his potty area, but he is stubborn. 

One thing I may change - the rock is a hard surface, so liquid does bounce off (pee ends up on his leg sometimes).  I'm thinking of adding bark or something, even though I absolutely despise bark. 

All in all, I love having him potty in just one area. Our grass is growing back, and is green!  I'm looking forward to this summer actually being able to walk around bare-foot in our yard and not worrying about keeping kiddos out of the grass.