Hypochondriacs and Germaphones: Do you wash your hands after petting a dog?

@drdoombot:

Am I being a little nutty with my hygiene? Yes

Anyone else act similarly with their pets? No

If you got over it, how? Never a problem except when cleaning or emptying the litter box. Then I do scrub with hot water and soap.

If not, how important is it to get over it? It comes with the territory. Of course, cats are fastidious.

I would wash before handling food. And after picking up the dog droppings. Which you probably do anyway.

Other than that it doesn’t occur to me.

And congrats on the new dog!

If it’s a noticeable dirty dawg, then yes. If it seems moderately clean, probably not.

I don’t wash my hands after petting my little maltese x bichon as it doesn’t bother me but I do wash my hands if I have been petting a dog that is smelly. Ewww, smelly.

Anyone that knows me laughs when they see me pet a smelly dog and then sniff my fingers. Ewck… hands washed! LOL

Suppose door handles, the toilet flusher, toilet taps and keyboards are much much worse and I don’t wash my hands after these activities.

My dogs are outside dogs. I wash my hands when I come inside and plan on being there for a while. I always wash my hands before cooking, eating or doing anything else like that, so its not really a problem. If you can manage to restrict yourself to “before you do something,” you’ll be normal(ish). :D

Not unless I saw them licking their parts before they licked me!

Although I do love animals, I need to wash my hands after I pet them. Petting them doesn’t disgust me at all but I just do it. It’s a bad habit that I have. Not only animals, everything I touch I have to wash my hands right after. I am a germaphobic. Hand sanitizer is something that I carry with me all the time. Yes people do bug me about it, but I can’t help it.

I always wash my hands after petting a dog. My hands feel dirty, and I’m sure they smell bad after touching a dog. I don’t need to wash after petting my cats though, they don’t make me feel dirty usually. If I touch their paws for some reason I will wash, since they’ve been walking around in the litterbox.

Not washing your hands after touching an animal is disgusting. That has nothing to do with hypochondrias or phobias. After touching an animal that spends all of its time on the ground and/or floor, wash your damn hands.

I wash my hands after every time I touch my pet snake.

I’m not either of those things but I still wash my hands after petting dogs. Dogs are kind of gross…

I would usually wash my hands after petting a dog.

I wash my hands before I eat anyway so I may not wash my hands RIGHT after touching the dog, but they’re going to get washed before I eat.

My dog lives outside and is pretty clean and doesn’t smell but other dogs do…..and I don’t touch them.

You don’t have to be a germphobe to know you should wash your hands at the very least after playing with a dog. We’ve all seen dogs roll around in their own expulsions.

I wash my hands! I hate the filmy residue that i get after i touch an animal…

you can usually feel if a dog is icky… if a dog is icky then I’ll wash my hands, or if I’m going to eat or handle food. I don’t wash my hands after touching my cats.

At least, if I just give the dog a pat or a scratch.. if there’s a lot of touching then I’ll wash.

It’s rare. If I touch my dogs eye boogies, then yeah I’ll wash my hands. But, I don’t wash my hands after touching pets. Or smothering my face into their fur.

Hypochondriac here and I do wash my hands after touching a strange dog but after touching my dog absolutely not!

Bathe the dog regularly… then you don’t need to wash your hands so much. You’ll know she’s clean! :-)

I’m no hypochondriac but I always use Purell after petting a strange animal as I have indoor cats at home and worry about them picking up something.

I have a papillion also! Pic And yes I do wash my hands after petting dogs. Not just stranger’s dogs but my own also.

I guess you’ll get over it the more you get tired of the hand washing frequency. A Pappillon is a pretty clean dog with silky fur. Aren’t they also all white?

I’m not saying that white fur is automatically clean, just that obvious filth from rolling around in excrement or something would be a lot easier to spot.

I’m assuming also that, aside from walks, this is an indoor dog. How clean/dirty are the floors in your house?

Perhaps you could decide to limit yourself to washing only before eating. That’s the primary way any germs could get into you (unless you are the type to be touching your eyes and mouth a lot)

BTW. Is a Germaphone like an iPhone except it protects one from germs? Where can I get me one of those?

:D

I wash my hands after handling my Hissers, but then, they walk thru their own poop.

I don’t worry about washing after petting dogs because the average house pet is unlikely to carry any dangerous zoonoses.

But small children carry innumerable germs and diseases that I can catch, (Fingers up noses, hands in diapers yukkkkk) so I always wash after petting them!

@rooeytoo True! Children are dirty little creatures!

@casheroo – I know, I was only half kidding. I do always wash my hands after holding the little ones around here. The poor tiny creatures are always covered with unidentifiable blobs and such.

I just realized I wrote “germaphones” instead of “germaphobes.” D’oh!

Dogs that are groomed or bathed regularly are not dirty. I do wash my hands after petting dogs that obviously are not washed – the gritty feeling in the coat is the give-away. But think about it – if you wash the dog once a week, and the dog is not rolling in anything, then her fur is as clean as your hair.

I don’t mind handling strange animals and even various creatures of the six and eight legged varieties, but after that last fiasco with the toddler and my wife, I absolutely refuse to touch any small human unless I am wearing a Haz-Mat suit and have a 55 gallon drum of Lysol™ in tow.

Children are such germy little things, I’d suggest boiling them first, but then that leads to having to BBQ them afterwards. =)

I just had to deal with ball pits and lots of climbing tubes that smelled of urine. It was such a joy. I Purelled my hands and my sons hand immediately. God, I hope he didn’t stick any of those balls in his mouth. I do not want to get sick again.

didn’t read all the posts, so this may already have been said.
If you want to wean you self off of obsessive hand washing, maybe you can cut it in half and sanitize half the time. Reserve the washing for before cooking or eating.
Why don’t they have hand washing stations at the front of restaurants anyway? Wouldn’t we be healthier if we washed our hands before we picked up our burgers?

@wildpotato…. you don’t wash your hair more than once a week? That’s pretty nasty too.

In a normal situation where I am just stroking or cuddling one of the dogs then no, I don’t feel the need to wash my hands straight after. I have a lot of dogs and so I would be constantly washing my hands if I was to do so everytime I came into contact with one of them. They are all washed regularly so, unless they have rolled in something nasty (which you can usually smell!) then it does not worry me. I was raised with lots of dogs and as a child I was caught sharing icecream with dogs! Obviously I don’t do that now but the point is, if that didn’t do me any arm then I doubt not washing my hands straight after stroking the dogs is going to.

Obviously I wash my hands before I eat regardless of whether I have touched the dogs beforehand and I always wash my hands after cleaning up after the dogs.

I believe that my upbringing with animals and my not panicking everytime I have touched an animal has helped my immune system a lot. I am very rarely ill. As my grandmother always says “a kid needs to eat a bit of dirt to build a strong immune system”.

@Leanne1986 I agree with your grandmother and plan to feed Jake dirt every chance I get!
(Hope Colin isn’t reading.)

@janbb Haha…I’m sure you won’t have to feed it to him, he’ll probably happily feed himself dirt!

@MrItty Back when I had dreads, that was about how often I washed my hair. Now I wash more often, yes. In any event, the parallel I cited is not inaccurate for the reason you imply. Was that an argument in favor of washing a dog more than once a week, or just a snarky comment thrown in my direction to no real purpose?

@wildpotato it was snarky to be sure. But not “to no real purpose”. Implication was (in my mind) that if you think it’s clean and acceptable to only wash your hair once a week, perhaps you’re not the best judge of what clean and acceptable is, and therefore your opinion on non-post-dog-handling-washing lacks a bit of merit.

@MrItty: I’d like to point out that just because a person only washes their hair weekly doesn’t mean they only wash everything weekly. Once-a-week shampooing works for some people.

@MacBean Thanks for the attempted clarification. I wasn’t actually thinking that it meant that, but I can see why you’d think I might. Maybe there are people whose hair doesn’t get nasty without being washed within a week, but I haven’t met them. <shrug>

@Mritty: My mother, due to her advanced age (95 in two weeks) shampoos once every two weeks; otherwise her pretty white hair turns to straw. She does wash the vital bits and bobs daily and looks attractive and smells just fine.

Why don’t you come up and see her sometime?

@MrItty: What would you consider an average life style for a 95 year old?

@gailcalled You misunderstand me. I meant that she, being 95, probably doesn’t lead an average lifestyle for an average person. I’m sure she’s perfectly normal/average when compared to other 95 year olds.

I know tons of people who follow a “no-poo” lifestyle. It’s not gross.

So, what’s the average life style for an average person?Come to think of it, what’s an average person? Someone who sweats in the gym 4 hrs/daily or the person holed up in the lab, looking for a cure for breast cancer?

[Mod Says:] Lets keep it on topic folks. The topic is “Hypochondriacs and Germaphones: Do you wash your hands after petting a dog?”

All personal and off-topic quips will be removed.

Note: User above was composing and did not see the [Mod Says:] Removed quip was not off- topic but not personal.

(sorry mods, I attempted to edit that to bring it back on topic, but didn’t get to it before it was removed. Here’s what I tried to add:)

Circling this thread back to on-topic – the dogs or other animals in question lead (in general) a far more active and involved lifestyle and interact with their environments a heck of a lot more often and in more ways than a 95 year old woman, and thus are bound – on average – to be dirty when handled. Thus requiring the hands to be washed.

@MrItty I’m curious about what exactly you think is happening when dogs “lead an active lifestyle” and “interact with their environments…often.” And additionally, what about these interactions make the dogs involved “bound – on average – to be dirty”? Seriously: I’m trying to imagine what you must be thinking, and can only come up with an impression that you believe for some reason that dogs often touch more than the bottoms of their feet and their mouths to things in the world. My dog, for instance, walks around in my backyard, on sidewalks, and occasionally in parks. She occasionally sits or lays down outside, stationary. Her activities are pretty much just sniffing things, carrying sticks in her mouth, walking and running around, and eliminating waste. Let’s take a survey of which of these things involve getting dirty. Walking and running does get her paws and occasionally her lower legs muddy. This is not usually even noticeable – mostly, it’s the same amount of dirt you’d see on the bottom of your shoes – and is easily handled by baby wipes. This is actually beside the point, because I don’t pet the bottoms of my dog’s feet. Stick-carrying I’m not concerned about either – why would this be dirty, generally speaking? There’s eliminating waste, but I don’t pet the area under her tail so I’m not too worried about that. She is an occasional roller – after which she always gets a bath. I’ve lived with lots of dogs, and this is an average to active lifestyle.

Do the dogs you know slide out and get stuff all over them when they run, or live in constant rain, or never get washed? I’m really confused about where you’re getting your facts from. Do you know if the examples you’re drawing upon to form your opinion – the dogs you know – are bathed regularly and as needed? (i.e., are they pertinent examples?) What on earth are the dogs you referred to as “in question” up to – burrowing in garbage? Have you ever petted a clean dog?

dogs have no more or less interaction with their environments than any other living being has with its environment.

@wildpotato – LOL – Agree. I also think there are some really gross dogs around that live in dirty conditions and are bathed occasionally so are therefore quite smelly but the majority of dogs that I know of (especially inside dogs) are not filthy by any means.

I am also surprised to hear that some people are more comfortable petting a cat and not washing their hands but not a dog.

My dog (in my opinion) is cleaner than my cat. My cat goes outside often in environments I am not aware of (clean or not clean), my cat licks his butthole and then himself and never bathes.

My dog has long white hair that is pretty much odourless, he lives inside and only goes outside to pee/poo in the garden or a walk (as wildpotato mentioned – only affects his paws). My dog doesn’t lick his butthole and then himself and is bathed weekly or more often if necessary.

I personally feel more comfortable petting my dog then shaking hands with someone LOL. I know where my dog has been!

@wildpotato In addition to what you noted, dogs further:
* lay down on the ground and floor, where live other creatures and where other creatures (including humans) have been walking, tracking in whatever they’ve previously walked through
* scratch themselves with the paws that have been on the floor and ground, spreading whatever is on their paws to other parts of their bodies
* lick themselves with the tongue that was carrying the stick that was picked up from who knows where, transferring whatever else that stick came into contact with to the rest of their bodies.

Do you honestly wash your dog EVERY time any of these things happen? If you do, I retract my objection and commend you on being an unbelievably fastidious dog owner.

Put another way – when you put your hands on the ground, in dirt, or on something that you don’t know where it’s been, don’t you wash your hands? If so, what is the difference in your mind whether it’s direct contact to your hands, or from your dog’s paws/mouth to its body to your hands?

If you want to be spotlessly clean and germ free then whether you pet your dog or child, or touch money, the grocery cart, the grocery basket, the groceries (cuz you don’t know who touched them before you), your keyboard, the door knobs and everything else in the world, you better wear gloves or buy the hand sterilizer stuff by the 55 gallon drum or better yet by tanker truck load.

I may become OCD re hand washing just thinking about it. My dog is the least of the problem!

Research has shown that children who are raised in households with animals are far less likely to have problems with allergies or auto-immune system disorders later in life.

You don’t need to feed a kid a peck of dirt, just raise him with pets to increase the likelihood of a well developed immune system.

I would draw the line at allowing the pet to lick the child’s face. There are a few nasties which can result from that.

@Buttonstc – just curious, what nasties are you referring to?

I had roundworms uppermost in my mind, but there are other zoonotic infections possible.

These are pretty rare but not totally impossible and the mouth is much more a direct route than the skin surface of the hands.

Again, these are very uncommon and I wouldn’t do a total freak out if the kid spontaneously kissed the dog on the mouth. But neither would I encourage it as a regular thing.

Some of the bacteria that can be found in feces are zoonotic and dogs and cats do lick their asses. Both cryptosporidium and campylobacter can be transmitted from animal to human, tho primarily through feces but i figure why take a chance

I don’t allow my pets to lick my
face. Hands, arms or feet are
fine. I just draw the line at
mouth contact.

If I ever had a kid with some type of weirdo gastro intestinal issue that didn’t respond to treatment and persisted beyond a reasonable length, I would ask them to test for zoonotic possibilities. It may be extremely rare, but it’s no as if it never happens at all.

@Buttonstc – I wasn’t aware of any really common ones either.

And just to set the record straight, I really am not fond of dogs licking me either, but every now and then it is almost inevitable that one will get overzealous and slurp me before I have time to get out of the way!

Yeah, I know what you mean. Altho my current cat is not really much of a licker, I had a different cat for 14 yrs. who persisted in this to her dying day.

To discourage her, I would simply blow right into her face every time she tried. It would abate for a little while, but she just couldn’t help herself. It was such a deeply ingrained behavior for her that it just kept popping up again. I have no idea why. Cats are just weird sometimes.

:)

@rooeytoo and @Buttonstc Have you ever tried living with Flatcoated Retrievers? Life is a constant game of “dodge the tongue”!!!

Yes.

No, but I once had a German Shepherd—same deal plus doggy breath and wanting to crawl up and sit in my lap, all 95 pounds of him. Fortunately, he was far easier to train than any cat I’ve ever had.

:D