[Intiltern]

my yard is completely muddy, so much so when I walk out there I come back in with about an inch of mud on them, I don't care about grass but I just want to be able to not have that much mud, I was thinking maybe sand?
here are some photos to show the ground, look at the ground not the dogs >.

[Galsteinbok]

I'd like to know as well! The house we just bought has a small backyard, but it's nothing but patio stone and mud! I'm glad now I didn't decide to rake up the leaves when we first moved in. At least it's some protection from all the muck!

[Intiltern]

yea tell me about it...I love my pups but man to get out the flirtpole or springpole with this kinda mud is almost imposible, I don't like them being muddy, every have to carry a 60lb dog from the kitchen to the bathroom then they find out they are getting a bath...no fun lol but either way I would like less water in my yard for them lol

[Apparpsmose]

Oh my gosh....me too!! You say bath and Daisy runs...lol... She also ways sixty pounds and she plants herself on the floor...lol... I just have a 10 x 10 that she stays in, in the daytime while I am at work. But I put down plywood in most of it....Course it is half covered with a tarp tied down to the top so she doesn't get wet when it rains....and she has a dog house. Guess your yard is too big for that....lol...Hope you find something. That is the way it is in the pasture at our house...no way you can go walking out there after a rain. Good Luck!!

[CaseyFronczek]

Rocks. Like pea gravel. Ours are a little bigger than your average pea gravel, but they do the job. When we add more in the spring, I will get actual pea gravel.
They have been a life saver when we get a ton of rain. My yard is small, so I kind of split it in half, one side pea gravel, the other side (which is much longer) is grass. This is what it looks like:



and this is what the grass looks like since we put the rocks in, they have totally saved my grass because I pretty much have the dogs going potty on the rocks only:



They weren't expensive either. I think we got.. 3 tons and paid like $100 or something.

[Intiltern]

wow yea, I soooo soooo soooooooo wish I could do that, since we don't own this house (my parents do) and they will want grass when we move out, the yard is TINY, a 50 ft roll of fence went around it...we have more yard behind the garage but a past dog liked to try to get out back there so we dont have it go that far, plus the dish sits pretty close to the edge of the grass so yea...I have been thinking of getting a kennel and putting it in the driveway by the garage, don't know how to stake it down but easy enough to put ply would in there for one of them to be in so the grass is less damgaged and probably have more grass that way, but I don't have the cash for it, we are planning on a treadmill, and to wear the dogs out on it and walks so they dont want to run around all the time so grass might grow some...also probably try apple cyder vinegar again this spring

and your yard looks AWESOME!!!!

[koebforfrn]

Pea Gravel or an underground drainage system. It looks like the backyard is primarily shaded though, right?

[Intiltern]

yea mostly, its less now than it was but it does make it nice and cool for Goren and Abby, it gets sun from about 9am to about 3pm but that is about it

[QRhnNSg9]

well if pea gravel is out of the question maybe just buy a couple bails of hay and cover the group.

[Intiltern]

that is a thought, it would absorb and then eventually turn to dust right

[Progniusis]

What you are thinking of is straw, not hay. But straw doesn't really absorb well at all. When people claim they want to use straw for horse bedding, I've always advised agaisnt it. It's icky, it retains bad smells, and all it does is just get wet and soppy and sits there...wet and soppy and still allows water to sit beneath it etc. It's a big damn mess, I'll tell you that.

[CaseyFronczek]

wow yea, I soooo soooo soooooooo wish I could do that, since we don't own this house (my parents do) and they will want grass when we move out, the yard is TINY, a 50 ft roll of fence went around it...we have more yard behind the garage but a past dog liked to try to get out back there so we dont have it go that far, plus the dish sits pretty close to the edge of the grass so yea...I have been thinking of getting a kennel and putting it in the driveway by the garage, don't know how to stake it down but easy enough to put ply would in there for one of them to be in so the grass is less damgaged and probably have more grass that way, but I don't have the cash for it, we are planning on a treadmill, and to wear the dogs out on it and walks so they dont want to run around all the time so grass might grow some...also probably try apple cyder vinegar again this spring

and your yard looks AWESOME!!!!

Thanks I can't stand it, because it's small.. can't wait til we can move and have a big yard! But it works for now.

I didn't realize you didn't own your house.. hmm.. I'm not sure what I'd do then, since I know you keep your dogs outside for the most part. It's going to be hard to grow anything, or let the yard dry up when there are two dogs on it often.

I wouldn't do straw though.. like PeytonLove said, it gets really nasty. I remember cleaning stalls that were bedded with straw.. bleh. You'd basically have to empty the whole thing out and start fresh everyday, because straw doesn't really absorb moisture. It was a PAIN.

[Intiltern]

ok, fare enough, I just had to throw something down on it today...was out there sliding while cleaning up the poop...so I had some old Aspin bedding for our snake (RIP) that we never used, I threw some of that down, not a lot but at least as they run on it it will mix in and hopefully start the drying process, I thought of this because the ceder that flys out of there doghouses makes the ground outside it completely dry which is awsome but I ran out of ceder(just had enough to fill there houses) so I saw that and was like why not so lets hope it helps, it can't hurt, we were thinking maybe wood chips, not much but yea, neither of them chew or eat wood so I don't think I would have an issue, if we dont put a ton down then it will have to be replaced regularly so when we move there would be no issue about reseeding

o and yea, we don't own it but since my parents do, we don't pay rent, don't pay bills at all, we don't have the money for even an apartment so this is pretty good, but if we get to where we have enough money to have a payment we are ganna buy a house

[WepKeyday]

Don't use straw, lol! We made the mistake of doing that one year when the mud was outrageous. The straw worked really awesomely for the first few days...until it started to get mud on it. Then it turned into a horrible muddy straw cement, lol!

The mud here sucks. Its like clay, and you gain six inches when you walk ten feet across it. Its deep, its gross, and it takes days to dry up. In the winter, when its just wet, its pretty much mud all through the season.

[Intiltern]

yea, that is about what my yard is, without the straw, you get instead...pine nettle things its pretty horrid and you have to step on the deck and use the steps to get the mud off, step into the kitchen kick your shoes off then go change your pants its bad right now

[WepKeyday]

Not to mention the following summer, cleaning up all that straw was a bitch. It was mud caked and spread out everywhere.

[Intiltern]

wow yea, I don't mined the little bits of wood, that gets turned in and does well, since the ceder has done great...Johnny wants to try to lay seed agian this year, he wants to turn the yard into a mud bog basically so we can rake it easy then lay seed then cover it and see if it takes this time, it took in many places last year but as we got so much drought then almost a flood it was ruined and we have less grass now than we did before so I am hopeing we can maybe gain some ground, we are going to probably buy enough seed to basically lay it THICK, like cover the entire ground, not have any dirt showing then cover the seed, but that wont be till after the last frost, so like May or June >.<

[emingeRek]

We had to get up the concrete that covered our whole backyard and amend the soil this fall so that it could soak through and settle during the winter. We have a huge backyard and it is probably 10-20% standing water right now.

We used straw in a pinch and it was ok. We ended up mucking it out and tossing it in our green "yard waste" bin once it got gross.

Then my awesome wife did something that has worked for weeks!

First she rolled down the black Weed Blocker cloth then covered that with 2 layers of burlap. Then used these big staple like things to stick it all in the ground. The liquid comes up during heavy rains but there's no mud!!!

We could only do a smalish patch right near the bottom of the stairs but the rough texture of the burlap wipes their feet really well. We do still get some mud after a case of group zoomies though.

[55Beaphable]

We get a truckload of wood chips dropped off about every year and we just shovel those on to the back yard.

[hs6KnlcW]

Just took care of this situation ourselves. We used a shovel, pulled out all of the lawn (muddy non-draining muck) and hauled it away in 4 trips. Had 5 yards of 3/8" round decorative gravel delivered and put it where ever you saw dirt before. Clean dogs and feet now! Will take pics and share later.