Getting soil healthy after dog feces?

[JLSnead]

Can anyone tell me what might work to help detox or re-energize the soil in a backyard after having lots of dog feces and urine on it for quite some time? The grass is looking really bad and becoming sparse.
I only have one dog now and I pick up feces daily. I have applied powered lime to help with the odor in the bare spots. I have even bought lots of topsoil and covered bare areas. I have switched to a dogfood that has more digestable material so the dog has less waste.
I realize that having a dog may not be conducive with having a lawn, but I want to have some grass back. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Re energize is what you need to do. For some reason you are not attracting the insects and microbes needed for decomposing dog poop. My dog's poop completely disappears in 4 days, so none of it is more than 4 days old (for whatever that is worth). But I don't have any smell in the yard, either. I'm down to one dog now. We just lost our longtime pet a few weeks ago and got a real nice Chow/Spitz from the humane society.

I use organic fertilizer (corn meal) and that's all. I used compost several years ago but probably didn't need it. The biggest problem would be with insecticides you might have used. But once you have a population of pill bugs, flies, and microbes, you should not have any problems with piles. The flies I get on my dog's piles are not house flies. I never see them anywhere except hovering and crawling on the piles. They're a tiny fly.

Once again, the more organic I have gotten over the years, the rewards have come in the most interesting ways. Who would have thought that disappearing dog poop would be a benefit to being organic?

[Kathe Kitchens]

I had a home with a large dog run where my dogs spent most of their time. The soil needed lots of help from the dogs' constant traffic, so regular applications of molasses helped a lot. Like Dave, I found my dogs' poop would biodegrade very quickly once the soil was healthy. Just to make sure, I took up the practice of keeping a sprayer of molasses mix ready and every other day or so would spray any new "gifts" the dogs left. It was a lot easier than picking it up and it allowed the natural material to be absorbed back into the soil.

I also applied a thin layer of mulch to the bare areas and that helped to protect the soil so the grass could regain a foothold and reclaim the area. It was a constant battle but worth the effort.

Kathe

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Come to think of it, I used to try spraying and dusting different things on my dog's poop. In the winter, back when I had two dogs, the insects and microbes couldn't seem to get to the poop and it piled up without disintegrating. Once I tried corn meal (I think). It grew some long, thin, hairy looking fungal fruiting bodies on it. My wife called it my Chia-Poop :lol: :lol: :lol: