LESLIE: Charles in Ohio is on the line and is dealing with some dogs that like to just eat away at the yard. What’s going on?
CHARLES: I was wondering if there’s an economical way to fix my problem I’m having in my backyard. I have a fence that’s square-shaped in the back of my yard, if you count the back of the house. I have two dogs and they like to run from one side of the house to the other, leaving a mud path – hard-baked path – from one side of the house to the other. And I’m looking for a way to fix that that would be easy on my pocketbook.
TOM: OK. So, can we control the dogs so that they won’t wear it out again if we restore the lawn?
CHARLES: No. The dogs, they – any time they see anything come across in front of our house, they like to run from one side to the other. So without chaining them up, which defeats the purpose of our fence, we like to let them run free.
TOM: You know what? A couple of things come to mind, one of which is that the kind of grass that you have there – I was thinking, Leslie, that something like a zoysia grass might be a little bit tougher.
LESLIE: I mean it is very, very durable.
Now, the other thing I was thinking – is this directly in the front of your house or is it on the side of your house?
CHARLES: The fence is in the back of the house, so basically it’s a big smiley face from the left side of the house to the right side, because they run around the – my deck.
LESLIE: I was going to say if there’s a way to make a slate pathway or some sort of stone that obviously would change the look of the yard itself but would give you an area that’s not going to be constantly scratched away at.
CHARLES: That sounds very feasible.
LESLIE: And that’s not difficult to do. You can completely create a pathway using some edger or you can get remnants of slate at any sort of stone yard. You can think about a ton of different ways to do it. Pavers. You can pick a price point and stick to it.
CHARLES: That sounds great. Will the dogs, because I put stone back there, stay off of that and create a new path or will that not affect the dogs at all?
TOM: I don’t think so. I think the dogs want to run against that fence, so they’ll probably try to get as close to it as possible.
CHARLES: That sounds great. I sure do appreciate it. I’ll look into some stone work then that – where I can make a smiley face going – back of my house.
TOM: Alright, Charles. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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