Hi Betsy!

I personally have always owned female dogs. Reason being living in the city with a male dog means walking the animal several times a day and him urinating on 20 different spots each time. Those spots, belonging to a neighbor, ie lawn, steps, fence etc etc. I wouldn't want a neighbors dog doing this on my property so I don't do such things.

A female will adopt a potty area very easily. You can use some cheap garden fencing around the pea gravel to fence it in - if you wish too.

During the summer heat, I have found spraying vinegar with a Dial A Sprayer controls the urine smell very well. It neutralizes and washes the urine into the soil below.

Scratch up your bare spots with a rake. Drop your seeds. Top dress the area using compost or peat moss. Step on the area with your feet to press the seeds down and keep watering. You'll have to sprinkle the spots with a hose as many as 3 times per day. Do not allow to dry out.

Block the seeded area from the animals using whatever you have in the garden. Bamboo sticks, a tomato cage support etc etc. You could also cut some plastic grocery bags into strips and tie a strip on the obstruction, so that it waves freely as the wind blows. The animals will go around the obstruction as they run.

Once the seed germinates, still keep them off the areas for at least a month and keep watering too. Water once everyday, and slowly ween the water to every other day, then every third day etc etc. until you are on your normal lawn watering schedule.

Hope this helps and best of luck to you - and your pets :-)

Have you considered a mulch walk way instead of pea gravel? Pea gravel is an acquired taste. If you like it, fine. When you don't like it, it can be intolerable and hard to get rid of. The think I like least about it is that it never settles and firms up. People step in it and kick it all around. There is another gravel that is chipped on the edges and does not squish around like pea gravel. It is pea sized and still called pea gravel but it locks in place to provide a very firm footing. I've seen it used here for driveways. But for a walk way I would seriously consider mulch. It is always decomposing and you can always add more...or you can let it go back to nature without having to haul it away.

I've got a fairly large female dog (lab/border collie mix) and a fairly small lawn (4k sq ft, but the dog is mostly in the back, which is probably less than half) and I don't get the dead spots. The only thing I can think of is that since I've gone to mostly organic practices, there are enough soil microbes to take care of the N in the urine. Even the areas that are all native grass (which have very reduced N requirements and tolerance) don't seem to develop the "P" circles.

Just to clarify Gary's comment of "During the summer heat, I have found spraying vinegar with a Dial A Sprayer controls the urine smell very well. It neutralizes and washes the urine into the soil below." The key point here is "WITH a Dial a Sprayer". Spraying straight vinegar on a lawn or plant, especially during the summer, will kill the plant. The dial a sprayer dilutes it with water to "safe" levels.

***************** No no no Gags ---- I'm spraying vinegar directly on the pea gravel, where the dog urinates, for the urine smell.
Pea gravel and urine was the jest of the first paragraphs, THEN I went onto grass taking.

Ah. Got it. But you're still diluting it with a hose-end sprayer, right?

Kind of wish our County would do that at some our dog parks - even with all the mulch, a few still have more than their fair share of "odiferous" smells!

gags, where are you and what kind of mulch do they use? I'm just collecting info, not suggesting anything.