I have a Holiday Let with a large garden, the damage a single dog can do in just a few days can be horrendous and devastating. Picking up enough poo to fill a 2ltr plant pot was not unusual. I no longer allow dogs. Not the dogs fault, i'm not blaming the dog(s). I blame the disrestpectfull owners. Set asside a smaller restricted area for the dogs or just don't allow the dogs into the garden, take them for a walk.
You won't get it decent if the dogs are going to use it. It sounds like 2 dogs is more than the balance your lawn can handle. Putting effort in is likely to be wasted.
Adapt the lawn area to suit the situation... mulch, bark, stone chips, astroturf etc would be better.
I had waterlogged lawn and dogs in my old property - same problem - they have a small footprint, and if they are big dogs it's quite a bit of force they exert per paw (a bit like the stiletto of a ladies shoe applies more pressure than a man's size eleven for the same body weight). Therefore, the smaller footprint will dig in deeper leaving a dimple in the ground, multiplied by 8 (two dogs) and worse when the ground is soft and wet as the dimples fill with water causing more waterlogging. For me, sorting out the drainage seriously alleviated the problem, didn't eliminate it, but the drier ground made for less paw prints and also helped improve the drainage further (no dimples to fill up with water...).
I'm in the same boat...it's lovely in the warm summer months, but come autumn and winter it turns into a bog. We've had a load of topsoil replaced there to fix compaction issues and while the borders are now doing great, the grass can't hold up. We have three dogs by the way...I'm thinking we will rework the area, sans grass, as it just doesn't work there. We have another area of grass which is fine, not amazing during the rainy months, but liveable so we'll just have that be our little bit of lawn. I think as the others have said it's better to find something that works with the dogs.
No way to restrict the dogs to the smaller area of lawn during the wet periods?
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