My 2 big dogs have been pooping in my garden area all winter. There is a thin cover of straw left over from last summer, but I'm certain that some of the waste has drained into my soil. Is this dangerous to my health or my future plants? Any ideas on how to treat it?
Also, any ideas on treating the dead grass from their waste also?
I love my dogs, but sometimes they are full of . . .
Thanks!

I have a very big dog, who leaves very big piles. Before the weather gets really warm, I get out and rake up whatever I think is going to cause problems in the summer. I pile it up in it's own pile separate from the compost and leave it to age-for years if neccessary. Eventually it breaks down on it's own. I really don't worry about any residue that it might leave in the garden, between baking summer sun, and freezing winter and microbe action, I figure it's pretty safe. But then I'm one of those people that eats raw eggs too.

I've got a big patch of crested wheat grass back where the dog usually does his thing. No trouble with dead spots, in fact it's the lushest, greenest patch of grass in town.

If you're worried about it, after raking offending areas up, I'd spread some clear plastic for a couple of weeks and solarize those spots. And perhaps a little further out. It should kill the nasties, but will also toast beneficials. The reason carnivore/omnivore droppings are not used as fertilizer is generally because of:
a) pathogenic organisms/parasites/disease risk to those higher up the food chain (i.e. people), and
b) possible contamination of undesirable elements, such as antibiotics, heavy metals, GMOs, etc... via commercial pet foods. (They use all sorts of dreck in animal feed.) If you prepare your pets' food, or feed a very high-quality food, you probably don't need to worry a whole lot about that, either. Harm to your plants is VERY unlikely, other than nitrogen burn. The stuff we rake up, we dump in little piles around the property boundaries to advertise to large varmints that dogs live here, go elsewhere.

Are your dogs wormed on a regular basis, and do they take a broad-spectrum heartworm treatment once a month? The stuff mine are on kills just about everything but tapeworms. If the answer is yes, I don't think I'd lose any sleep over it, just shovel it, and dispose of it. At the risk of sounding like a exceptionally bad groundskeeper, when our dogs lay landmines out in the woods, or on the back of our property, I don't bother to disarm.

If you want to discourage your dogs, you might try occasionally dusting your garden with cayenne pepper - - dogs usually sniff out a good place, and capsicum-laced soil would probably not smell like a good place to mark territory. Or put up a short fence. Or get one of those nifty invisible fences, and put your garden out-of-bounds.

OUr old 120 pound Akita used to take a daily dump in the garden over the winter. Rarely in the summer, only in the winter. As long as your dogs aren't on a raw meat diet I don't think a it will hurt anything, especially if you till it in and let it degrade. You can always pooper scoop what you can see on the surface before you till and/or plant.

I've been out digging in the yard today and just had to add to this.

I'm making a round flower/vegetable bed. One half of the circle is where our old dog who died last summer used to do his business. After he was gone, I raked up the mess, but he was there for several years, so obviously there was an accumulation that was broken down and stayed there. The soil I dug there today was wonderful. It looks like something plants might actually grow in. The other half is heavy clay over top of hardpan.

My dog loves to poop in the strawberry patch...too gross!