6 Easy Ways To Keep a Dog from Pooping in Your Yard

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After spending hours maintaining your yard and making everything perfect, just the way you want it, the last thing you need is for some dog poop to show up and ruin everything. This can be not very pleasant, especially if you do not own the dog. So how can you keep a dog from pooping in your yard?

To help stop a dog from pooping in your yard, try to use a commercial or eco-friendly dog repellent, or you could set up some fencing or set up some sprinklers to help deter the dog. If it is not your dog, you could go and calmly speak to the dog’s owner about the issue and put up some signs.

In this article, we go through how you can stop your dog from pooping in your yard and how you can stop a neighbors dog from doing the same if you do not own the dog. There are some straightforward and inexpensive methods and some more costly ones, but there is an option for everyone.

Stopping Your Dog from Pooping on Your Lawn

If you own a dog, but you spend a significant amount of time taking care of your yard, too, you may not want your dog using it as its toilet. Thankfully, there are many methods available to you that could help prevent your dog from pooping in your yard without doing any harm to your dog.

Some of these methods can be expensive or time-consuming to accomplish, but they are worth it. Let us go through how you can prevent your dog from pooping in your yard.

1 – Set Up Barriers

A great cost-effective way to help prevent your dog from pooping where you do not want it to is to set up some barriers around your yard. This method is an instantly effective solution that will prevent your dog from accessing certain areas.

You could put up a few fences, which can be a bit pricy, but you can get small fences to just protect your flower beds, for example, or to corner off your favorite BBQ area of your yard. These smaller fences will do the job unless you have a particularly determined dog.

If you do not like the aesthetics of a small fence, you could use plants as a barrier, like hollies, that will stop your dog from getting into specific areas. Or you could use things that dogs do not like to walk on, like gravel or mulch path.

2 – Create a Poo Zone for Your Dog

Creating a poo section for your dog in your yard is an excellent way of keeping the rest of your yard poop-free. To do this, you need to train your dog to use a particular location, and you can mark out this location with some sand.

Then you need to use a lot of praise and encouragement during the training. It would be more effective to start this training when your dog is still a puppy, but it can be done with an adult dog.

You need to be persistent with your dog’s training and not get mad at your dog if they get it wrong from time to time as they are learning.

3 – Use Repellents

There are many safe dog repellents that you can use to help train your dog to poop in certain areas and avoid other areas. A very effective repellent that you could use is vinegar, but there are a few more like almond oil, lavender, or citronella.

These repellents are safe for your pet but will help protect areas of your yard from their daily deposits. If you do not want to use sprays, you can plant their plant equivalents that will still do the job.

You can plant some lavender and citronella in certain areas, or a plant called scaredy cat plant (Coleus Canina) that has a very potent smell to animals.

4 – Set Up Sprinklers

Setting up some sprinklers is an excellent way to help prevent your dog from pooping in specific areas of your yard, but this will only work if your dog does not enjoy the water. This prevention method is an excellent alternative to fencing or repellents if you do not want the aesthetics or smells in your yard.

You can set up sprinkler systems in certain areas of your garden but leave one poop zone for your dog uninstalled. This can be an expensive option, but you do get the benefit of not needing to water your yard by hand.

5 – Have Patience and Be Consistent

The most vital thing when trying to train your dog where and where not to poop is patience, as your dog is not used to these rules yet. You need to be consistent too, and every time you let your dog out to use the bathroom, you need to go with it and encourage it to poop in the right place.

It is imperative that you do not get angry or annoyed at your dog during this process, as they will not understand why you are yelling at them. You need to be calm and allow for some mistakes once in a while.

6 – Use Smells To Your Advantage

We all know that dogs have strong and sensitive noses, so you can use this to your advantage when trying you train your dog not to poop in your yard. Dogs will avoid any new smell, so if a place smells unfamiliar, they would instead return to an area they know they are comfortable with.

You can use this fact by tricking your dog into thinking that certain areas in your yard are unfamiliar by changing their smell. This will make your dog return to its pooping zone without hesitation. You need to ensure that you use a scent that will repel your dog and not attract them.

You can use the same senses that are considered repellents mentioned above, or you can use a different smell specific to your dog that you know they do not like.

Stopping a Neighbours Dog from Pooping on Your Lawn

If you are a homeowner that takes good care of their yard and puts a significant amount of time into maintaining everything, it can be disheartening when you go and look in your yard only to find some dog poop sitting waiting for you.

This may be fine once in a while, but when it seems to have become a regular occurrence, it is a problem that needs to be fixed. Below are a few things that you could try to stop a neighbors dog from pooping on your lawn. Remember, the goal is not to hurt the dog, so these are all safe options for the dog.

1 – Use Commercial Repellents

If your neighbors’ dog is pooping in your yard, you can go and buy a dog repellent to help dissuade the dog from continuing this practice. There are many different commercial dog repellents on the market today that you can try to find one that works for you.

You should be able to find a few options in a store close to you, but if you cannot, then there are multiple available on online shops that you can order and get delivered to your door. Just keep in mind that these repellents can be pretty costly, so you may want to look at and try some alternatives that are mentioned below first.

2 – Use Eco-Friendly Homemade Repellents

If you want to avoid any harmful chemicals when trying to deter the dog from pooping in your garden, then there are many eco-friendly dog repellents that you can make in your kitchen that may just do the trick.

You Should always remember that not all dogs are the same, so one repellent may work for one dog but not another; you will need to experiment to find the one that works for your yard.

One of the best ways to prevent dogs from pooping in your yard is to pour or spray vinegar around your yard. Dogs have extremely sensitive noses, so use this to your advantage.

Another repellent you can try is citronella oil, this is more expensive than vinegar, but it is still cheaper than commercially made products. Dogs hate the smell of this oil and will not go near it, so this product is a must-try.

Suppose you do not want to go and buy something; there might be something already in your kitchen that could help. You can use some chili powder or cayenne pepper to help discourage dogs from pooping in your yard.

You just need to sprinkle one of these around your yard, and you can mix the powder with a little bit of water and liquid soap to help it stick to brick or concrete areas. Just be sure to wash the brick or concrete with vinegar first to eliminate any enticing smells that may be there.

3 – Fence Your Yard In

This may be a good amount of work, and it may be a bit more expensive, but if you want to help protect your lawn that you worked hard on and spent a lot of time and energy on, then setting up a fence or a barrier of some sort around your yard can aid in protecting it from dog poop.

This is an excellent option to still keep a friendly relationship with your neighbors and get their dogs to stop pooping on your lawn, as it sends a clear message that they are not to allow their dogs to poop there.

This is also a more permanent option, so you will not need to spend money every month on dog repellents. If fencing off your entire yard is a bit too costly, then you can fence off sections that are the most important to you.

4 – Use Mulch and Plants to Your Advantage

If you do not want to go the route of fencing everything off or using repellents, then you can use your garden to your advantage in this situation too. You can put down some mulch and specific plants in your garden if the dogs tend to poop in your flower beds.

Dogs do not enjoy walking on mulch or other ground coverings that may irritate them and their paws. You can include things like some chunky pinecones, thorny plant clippings for rose or blackberry bushes, or even some large wood chips.

You should try and avoid using sand, or you should at least cover all sandy areas in your garden with mulch as dogs do like to dig and may be attracted to the sand. You can also plant prickly plants in between your other plants like huckleberries, hollies, agave, or prickly pears to help discourage the dogs from pooping in that area.

Remember never to use onion or garlic to repel the dogs as these plants are toxic to dogs; if the dogs accidentally eat some, it will require a vet visit, which will destroy your good relationship with your neighbors.

5 – Set Up Discouraging Signs

If you assume that the problem is instead the dog’s owners and not the dog itself, meaning your neighbors allow their dogs to poop in your yard, and they think it’s fine, then you need to bring the issue to the owner’s attention.

You can simply and easily do this by setting up some signs to discourage the owner from letting their dog poop in your yard or to at least clean up after their dog if they do.

You can also set up signs that show that the dog owner could pay a fine if they are caught leaving without cleaning up their dog’s poop from your lawn.

6 – Speak to the Dogs Owner

If you are uncomfortable with taking any of the actions mentioned above, that is okay, too, as you can still sort out the problem. Go and have a meaningful and calm conversation with your neighbors, which could be enough to stop the unwanted “gifts” from appearing you’re your yard.

When you speak to your neighbor, make sure you approach the right person in the household, as you do not want to cause a scene with someone who is not to blame. You should also remember that the dog’s owner may not even know that their dog is using your yard for its daily deposits.

A good thing to do is before you go and speak to your neighbor, you should try and take a picture of the culprit so you have some evidence just in case the owner does not believe you.

When you finally speak to the dog’s owner, you need to keep the conversation polite and light and not accusatory and argumentative. The last thing you need is to fight with someone over dog poop.

Final Thoughts

Dogs are lovely animals, but they do poop, and they will use your yard as a place to relieve themselves, which can be annoying, especially if it’s not your dog. There are several ways for you to prevent this from occurring, and they can work with your dog and your neighbor’s dogs.

Good luck with your dog poop problem, and remember to always stay calm no matter how you approach the issue.

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