• Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, I’ve seldom not had a family dog in my home over the years, and I think that’s disguising. If my dog accidently gets me even remotely near the mouth, I scrub my face and gargle vodka.

    Despite the misinformation on this subject in our society, dog’s mouths are NOT “clean”!

    • money_loo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Perhaps part of the reason the idea that “a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s mouth” came to be so widely believed is that we don’t typically swap diseases with our dogs when we swap saliva. You are not going to get the flu from a dog kiss, but you might get it from kissing a human loved one.

      Most of the bacteria in your dog’s mouth are not zoonotic, which means you probably won’t get a disease from a big old doggy kiss. There are exceptions to this. Dogs that are fed a raw diet are at an increased risk of contracting salmonella, which can be spread to humans, and you really don’t want to share kisses with a dog that regularly raids the litter box.

      In other words, kissing your dog is less risky than kissing another human

      Good luck out there!