After Honey's multiple escapes, plus her desire to dig to China, we sectioned off a shady part of our backyard, built the fence higher on that section and made it the dog's yard. There is no grass (too shady, plus those digging feet wouldn't let grass stay anyway. There is "natural mulch" in the form of leaves and some pinestraw over part of it, but much of it is bare. Since there is so much plantlife, the bareness doesn't bother me too much, but the odor does. I can scoop the poop (and believe me there is a lot of it with 3 big dogs), but the odor is coming from the urine. Murphy is especially bad about walking down the steps and going right there. Sometimes when we are sitting out on the deck, which opens right onto their "yard", it smells like we're sitting in the middle of a barnyard. I guess that she has just peed so many times in the same spot that the ground is saturated.

Any good ideas about a dog friendly, but absorbent ground cover or mulch we could use?? Other than going out there and turning that soil with a shovel, I don't know what else to do. Keep in mind that this is a pretty big section of yard (at least 60 ft by 20 ft) that would probably require a truckload of whatever we choose.