Comment by zzzeek
4 hours ago
you had to choose between vinegar and glyphosate, I'd use the vinegar. your dogs aren't going to roll around in a too-strong concentration of vinegar, it has a smell and if it were actually going to cause burns (what kind of vinegar is this, something from a chemical supply house? ) animals would be immediately repelled by it (plus it evaporates quickly anyway). whereas with glyphosate, none of that applies, it's a fully synthetic chemical that stays in the atmosphere for days, would not send any cues to animals, and its effects on animals may be long term, concealed for years, and fatal.
but as someone else said above, if this is a certain area that your dog wants to be, you can always pull weeds for that area by hand, just make sure you get the entire root.
Thanks for the advice. I bought 30% vinegar on Amazon. The instructions are to add in a little dish soap. Do you think that will safely repel the dog when dry?
The soap is a surfactant to make the vinegar stick to the weed leaves for longer.
It's not necessary, but it probably lets you use a little less vinegar, so it's probably worthwhile. I don't add soap, I just spray straight 30% (agricultural) vinegar in the small set of areas where a torch would be dangerous.
Dried vinegar does not irritate dogs. They will avoid the area while it smells like pickles.
A better chemist than I will hopefully corroborate this, but I think that the strength of smell is directly correlated to the reactivity of the acid. So when the smell is mild (i.e. near the level of household vinegar (5%)), the risk to skin and mucous membranes is low-to-zero.
I don’t think there will be much left of the vinegar when dried. Acetic acid is much more volatile than water. If it’s dry, it means that it’s gone. And it has an unpleasant smell even at harmless concentrations, if it’s not quite dry yet.