{"id":413,"date":"2006-09-17T08:47:17","date_gmt":"2006-09-17T08:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fiveforks.com\/jeb\/2006\/09\/dog_licks_gross_but_not_danger\/"},"modified":"2006-09-17T08:47:17","modified_gmt":"2006-09-17T08:47:17","slug":"dog_licks_gross_but_not_danger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/2006\/09\/dog_licks_gross_but_not_danger\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog Licks: Gross But Not Dangerous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Information on the many dog tongues in Mac5 World&#8230;. Still not sure why dogs can lick their wounds to help them heal and we can&#8217;t&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ask.yahoo.com\/20060906.html\">ask.yahoo.com\/Katie-and-Clyde&#8217;s-Tongues<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Dear Yahoo!:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Are dogs&#8217; mouths really cleaner than humans&#8217;?<\/p>\n<p>Jenna<\/p>\n<p>Glendale, California<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dear Jenna:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All dogs lick themselves. Some eat their own feces. Humans (most of &#8217;em, anyway) do not. So how in the world can the mouth of a canine be cleaner than that of a person? Simple &#8212; it can&#8217;t. <\/p>\n<p> According to <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/2020\/Health\/story?id=1213870\">ABC News<\/a>, this is basically an urban legend. However, unlike the one about the <a href=\"http:\/\/urbanlegends.about.com\/od\/horrors\/a\/the_hook.htm\">psycho killer with the hook<\/a>, this story has a grain of truth. Although the mouth of a typical dog is full of bacteria, it&#8217;s &#8220;species specific.&#8221; So, if a dog were to lick a person, most of the germs wouldn&#8217;t transfer. &#8220;Bottom line &#8212; you&#8217;re more likely to get a serious illness from kissing a person than kissing a dog.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p> The <a href=\"http:\/\/amos.indiana.edu\/library\/scripts\/dogmouth.html\">myth<\/a> may have stemmed from the way pups lick their wounds. A dog&#8217;s tongue gets rid of dead tissue so wounds heal faster. Perhaps folks concluded that dog saliva is &#8220;healthy.&#8221; Hardly the case, but you shouldn&#8217;t be afraid of licks. They might be <a href=\"http:\/\/urbanlegends.about.com\/od\/dogs\/a\/dog_breath.htm\">gross<\/a>, but they&#8217;re not dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Information on the many dog tongues in Mac5 World&#8230;. Still not sure why dogs can lick their wounds to help them heal and we can&#8217;t&#8230; ask.yahoo.com\/Katie-and-Clyde&#8217;s-Tongues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/jeb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}