DoggieLawn Product Review

I want to start this review out by saying that I never thought I would have a dog that was "pad trained" fake grass trained or in any other way trained to go inside my house.  No matter how small the dog was the very idea of it just seemed disgusting to me.  In fact I thought people who had their dogs trained to go inside were just plain crazy.  Copley was of course trained to go outside and Kerrigan was trained to go outside from the time she was a puppy.  It was not until I got Nova that I decided we needed to find an indoor solution (and started to realize a lot of people have perfectly good reasons for needing an indoor potty solution).  It was at the time not going to be a permanent fix but she needed a place to go when she was not yet willing to go outside.  So I put pee pads in her pen.  For a variety of reasons a year later still have pee pads in my house.  Nova only uses the pads once a day, if that.  Kerri will now use the pads if we are gone for a while but overall they are occasional use products.  We tried taking them away but then Nova would totally un-housetrain herself and the only thing worse than pee on pads that I have to pick up is pee somewhere else in my house.

When I was contacted by the folks at DoggieLawn about doing a review I was intrigued and interested in trying the product but I did not at all expect to love it as much as I did.  In fact I plan to subscribe to DoggieLawn myself at the end of the month when my grass is worn out.  The stuff is AMAZING!  Take it from a skeptic, this stuff is the best solution I've ever seen if you need your dog to do it's business inside the house.  Me and Mr.DogInTheDesert were both skeptical going into it but the grass just keeps coming through for us at every turn.

First of all it is real grass.  Just like the stuff you have in your backyard, except that it is grown hydroponically so there is no dirt.  Because it is a real plant you do have to water it.  I was a little skeptical about that.  Won't watering peed on grass make the room smell like pee?  Well I am pleasantly surprised that the stuff does not smell!  I got the petite size (it is the size that is available starting at $29 monthly depending on how often you want it) and with occasional use over two weeks you can't even tell its been used.  I can't smell anything at all in the way of dog pee.  We did have one "incident" where Nova had a slightly runny poop and even after picking it up there was some *stuff* left on the grass.  I was pretty bummed out about that because it seemed like the whole thigh would be kinda ruined by one only slightly iffy poop.  Then it occurred to me to try to rinse off the grass.  I took it out of the box, put it in the backyard and hosed it off.

As you can see it held up perfectly.  I let it dry out a little bit for a few hours, put it back in the box and replaced it in the potty corner in the dog room and it has been great since.  This is certainly not the intended use of the DoggieLawn but it does prove even clean freaks like me can use the DoggieLawn.

I think the best feature about DoggieLawn is actually the free training help they provide!  Once you subscribe you can call and schedule a time to speak to a trainer that can help you out with any issues you are having AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED!  That's right- they have a trainer available that will listen to your specific situation and help you get on the right track.  Just that would be worth the subscription fee!  My dogs did not need any help, I just replaced the pee pads with the grass and they went right for it, but I did talk with one of the trainers and they seemed friendly, knowledgeable and their methods of housebreaking get my stamp of approval.

In conclusion DoggieLawn is great!  Two other great uses I wanted to mention are potty training a puppy.  If you plan to have the dog go outside only, but they are still to young/unvaccinated to use your outside grass DoggieLawn would be a great alternative to pee pads because you are actually teaching the dog to go on real grass!  Seems perfect to me.  Also if you live in an apartment and want a solution that can be put on your balcony or porch DoggieLawn would be great.  Of course it also would work great for people like me who are pee pad users (or as I am now going to say used to be pee pad users before I found DoggieLawn)!

*I was given a free patch of DoggieLawn for this review but my opinions are all my own.