Why Sharing Food with Your Dog Is Unhygienic
We love dogs, but let’s face it they’re not the cleanest creatures. They’re known to stick their faces in everything–dirt, garbage, poop, other dog’s butts, their own butts. Now everyone has bacteria, viruses and germs in their saliva, but dogs have a lot of it. While most of the stuff in their mouth is harmless enough, they can carry zoonotic organisms. Those are bacteria or parasites that pass between animals and humans to cause diseases such as clostridium, salmonella, E coli, and campylobacter. If that wasn’t gross enough, sharing food with them also puts you at risk of picking up internal parasites. Most of the time, if you have a healthy immune system, your body can fight off a lot of those nasties, but not always. And when things go wrong, they really go wrong. For example, dogs have been known to spread haemophilus aphrophilus to people, which can cause brain abscesses and heart inflammation. While those internal parasites we mentioned before, if you ingested, can find their way into your vital organs and cause lots of serious medical issues. No wonder the British Veterinary Association has strictly cautioned against sharing food “on grounds of pet and human health”.
But Humans Are Gross Too, Right?
You might be thinking, is sharing food with your dog really more unhygienic than sharing with people? Let us take this chance to bust the longstanding myth that our mouths are dirtier than our dogs, so sharing food poses no extra risk.
Yes, people have a lot of bacteria in their saliva too, but that’s a misunderstanding of how bacteria works. As germ expert and associate professor of environmental health at the University of Arizona Kelly Reynolds told Buzzfeed News: “The bacteria counts tend to be similar but the types of bacteria are very different.”
She explains that mixing bacterias between people and dogs can throw off the delicate balance of good bacterial flora in our mouths that helps keep us healthy.
01/73 unexpected things that may happen if your dog licks your face!
How to Feed a Sick Dog
If our social feeds are any indication of how much we love our dogs, the answer is a lot. We let them into our hearts, we let them into our lives — a lot of us even let them sleep with us in our beds. Given how close we are with our dogs (and the fact that theyre not all that concerned about hygiene), it can make you wonder: Can my dog get me sick?
“Most of the everyday illnesses were used to hearing about dont cross back and forth between dogs and humans, but there are some diseases our dogs can spread to us,” says Dr. Wesley Long, director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist.
Dr. Long says the three most common ways for your dog to get you sick are through:
But, my fellow dog lovers, theres no need to fret. Heres everything you need to know about staying healthy while sharing your home with your furry roomie.