"Help! What are these yellow rings in my lawn?!" The yellow patches of dead grass, sometimes encircled with a darker green ring, on your lawn is announcing to everyone that you own a dog. This is probably not the message that you want people to receive when they look at your front yard. The cause of these unsightly spots is the amount of nitrogen within your dog's urine. Female dogs typically make the spots on the lawn more often than males. Female dogs tend to squat to relieve themselves, which in turn, causes their urine to be more concentrated in a specific area. A little nitrogen applied to your lawn can actually be beneficial and help the appearance of your lawn, but when poured in intense, large amounts, it can be very detrimental to the area. That is why a darker green or healthy grass circle occasionally surrounds the yellow patch of dead grass because the outer circle of the ring receives a smaller amount of the nitrogen. I will never forget the strange look I received when explaining this to a gentleman who had these exact spots in his yard! The best solution to this problem is training your dog to use the restroom elsewhere. It is possible that if the patch of grass that has been soiled, is immediately sprayed with water, then the damage to the grass might be decreased. However, if the patch of grass is not sprayed within the hour of urine contact, a yellow patch will be the likely result. This is another reason that I like to have an irrigation system available. It is possible to reseed or add new sod to yellow patches. Once the seedlings or sod begin to grow allow them to have a longer than usual growing time to encourage root establishment before mowing. During the warm season months Bermuda and Zoysia grass will bounce back and grow over spots in time. What if, worse case scenario, you don't have a dog, but your lawn looks like you do, thanks to neighboring dogs? Perhaps the only answer to this unfortunate conundrum lies in the often-quoted phrase "good fences, make good neighbors".