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Doctors initially thought that she'd contracted a disease in the Dominican Republic, from where she'd just returned after a family vacation. Instead, they identified the bacteria Capnocytophaga, present in dogs' saliva, as the cause of her virulent sepsis.
The woman recalled her German shepherd puppy licking an open cut which she said had been "slightly infected."
I am very wary of these Beasts, very unsanitary and commonly diseased.
While I'll pass on the 'puppy kisses', the fact that millions of people (especially children) regularly enjoy Fido's slobbers without any problems at all should make it glaringly obvious to ... well, everyone ... that the risk of limb-amputation is vanishingly small.
If you take unnecessary car trips (to the movies, a restaurant, etc.) then you're taking a far greater risk (35,000+ fatalities annually) than smooching with Rover.
Perspective. It's a thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ByeByeLW
^ I remember being told that it was okay to let a dog lick your wound, in fact that would clean it. Yikes!
And who am I to ask you to lick my sores?
Springsteen, For You (later a hit for Mannfred Mann's Earth Band)
Saliva is filled with germs, whether human, canine, or komodo. It is designed to help break down food as the first stage of digestion. The bacteria present is largely what makes it effective in this regard. Hence, letting any animal lick a wound — infected or not — is risky. Most of the time, it won't cause any problems, but occasionally it can introduce harmful bacteria into the body which the immune system cannot handle. As a rule, let the idiom "to lick one's wounds" remain figurative, because actually doing so might finish you off.
^ I remember being told that it was okay to let a dog lick your wound, in fact that would clean it. Yikes!
One of my neighbors told me about a patient she had that almost died from infection caused by dog licks. The lady had had open heart surgery and got her dog to lick the area because she believed the old myth. She almost died from the infection.
Just remember, microbes are going to here long after all of the Homo sapiens sapiens are gone. They will continue to evolve, mutate and try to kill everything in their way, well at least the evil pathogenic ones! If you want to live forever, become a microbe.
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