You have pets and you are looking to put in a synthetic backyard putting green.  You might be asking yourself, do I have to strike a balance between how much yard I dedicate to a putting green and how much to pets?   Or can I cover my whole yard in putting green with little worry about the dog?

So can I let my dog pee on my putting green?  No, Don’t let your dog pee on your putting green.  While Dog pee wont damage your synthetic turf it will effect play-ability and cause odor.  Its best to encourage your dog to pee somewhere else.

Pet owners replace their whole yard with synthetic turf for ease of maintenance and the turf does fine, so can you make your whole backyard into a golf paradise?  Answer No, read on to find out why.

Does dog pee damage synthetic golf green fibers?

The components of dog pee (mostly water and a smattering of urea, hormones and minerals) are not capable of damaging synthetic turf fibers or the turf structurally under normal exposure.  Also, dog urine will not discolor synthetic turf.  You might be familiar with dog peed making yellow patches in your grass.  This is caused by the high nitrogen concentration of dog urine burning the grass.  Synthetic turf does not respond the same way as natural grass to nitrogen rich dog urine and will remain green despite your pup’s best efforts.

So why not let your dog pee on your turf and lay that 100 ft practice putting lane that will be sure to give you the edge your game needs?

Watch out! Dog pee can cause bumpy putting greens.

The force of a dog peeing can cause pitting in your green.  This is more common with female dogs who squat and direct their pee in a more concentrated zone.  The direct stream can wash out the infill of your putting green in that specific area which causes a pitted playing surface.

Most synthetic putting greens are created by excavating an area and adding a base of compacted crushed stone or gravel.  On top of that a layer of limestone or rock dust is compacted.  The synthetic green fabric is laid over the compacted material and pinned in place.  Then the infill is applied over the top of the synthetic green fabric.  Infill is usually sand that is spread across the top of the green to help hold the fabric down and support the individual fibers of the green to stand up like natural grass.  Because this infill is just sand, the force of the direct dog pee will wash out the sand in that area, with no sand to support them, the fibers don’t stand up.  This results in pits or locations where the turf fibers are laying down while surrounding turf fibers are standing taller. This can be overcome by brushing your putting green to return it to a consistent surface.  Brushing the green will stand the grass back up and allow the sand to settle back in a consistent way to support the fibers uniformly.  It’s a simple solution, but I would rather be playing on my putting green than maintaining it, so I discourage my dogs from peeing on the green.

Dog urine on your putting green – Avoid that smell!

Keep your dog from peeing on your putting green to avoid the smell of urine.  Smelling urine while trying to perfect your putting game definitely takes the pleasure factor down a notch or two.

The organic material of natural grass is far superior at masking and naturally eliminating the small of urine when compared to synthetic turf.   Urea a component of dog pee breaks down into ammonia which our noses are quite sensitive to.  Repeated peeing on your synthetic putting green without cleaning or neutralizing the pee will result in a strong order especially on a hot day.  There are products and ways to eliminate the smell of urine on your putting green that I will discuss further down in this article but my vote is to keep the dog from peeing on the green in the first place so you do not have to go through the hastle of routinely cleaning the green to eliminate the urine odor.  Cleaning the smell of urine from your green is an involved process that you do not want to have to regularly repeat.  So again, it is best to discourage your dog from peeing on the green.

Will dog pee on my green effect green speed?

Outside of the pitting discuss above it is unlikely your dog peeing on your green would result in a change in green speed.   You don’t have to worry about dog urine reacting with synthetic turf in a way that creates variations in the turf fabric (sticky or glassy areas).  However, it is important to note the steps you take to fix the pitting and remove the smell of urine from your putting green will likely change the speed of your green.   If you have gone through the effort of getting your green speed dialed in to just where you want it, the last thing you want to think about is redoing all that work because you had to rinse the smell of urine out of your green or groom your infill to remove pitting.

What do you do if your dog pees on your golf green?

You took my advice and you had the best intentions of keeping your dog from peeing on your putting green, but the dogs a slow study and peed on your green anyway, now what?

Its likely one or two pees will not effect your green, but if you find your sneaky pooch has been constantly peeing on your green and now it is time to take action; here are some steps to follow to make sure you green is back to smelling great and rolling flat.

First combat the smell.

To insure your green doesn’t small like dog urine the best option is to use a pet order eliminator product such as Angry Orange (amazon link).  It works best to dilute 8oz in one gallon of water and use a sprayer to gently apply the solution to your green.  Don’t use a high pressure hose your putting green this will cause all kinds of inconsistencies in your infill or spray your infill out of the green entirely.  If you decide to use a hose make sure to put adjust the spray to a gentle option to maintain the consistency of your infill.

Next combat the pitting.

You will want to brush and roll your synthetic putting green to eliminate any pitting.  Before starting, make sure the turf is dry.  Dry turf insures the infill will fill in any inconsistencies when you brush.  Remember the infill is just sand and wet sand will not flow to correct pitting when brushed.  You will want to use a brush with synthetic bristles.  Make sure to brush against the grain to start.  This will stand the blades of the grass back up and allow the infill to flow evening out to support the fibers and allow them to stand up.  Once you have done the full surface against the grain, go back over and brush from all different directions.  This will insure there are no contours or grain in your green that will effect your balls travel.

Next roll your green.  Rolling is not mandatory, however, brushing your green will usually slow it down as all the fibers are standing straight up which creates more resistance on the ball and will slow the ball more then if they are slightly bent over.  The goal of rolling your green is not to compact the infill but to slightly bend the fibers of the green.  With this slight bend the ball will get less resistance from the green, which results in a faster green.

If you don’t have a roller, the large plastic ones you can fill with water work well.  That way you can control the weight of the roller by adding more or less water.  You can find an example here.

To sum it all up: keep your pets off your putting green, so you can spend more time using it then maintaining it.