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| Why you shouldn’t cut corners on hygiene when you own a pet |
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- The risk of getting sick from your pet is low as long as you practice good hygiene and keep your pets healthy.
- Young children, older adults, and people who are pregnant or immunocompromised should be extra cautious about handling pets, especially reptiles, birds, rodents, and cats.
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Generally speaking, if you’re healthy and follow proper hygiene practices, you don’t need to worry too much about picking up something from your pet. “The risk of picking up an infectious disease from your pet is low, but still present and must be carefully managed,” says Dr. Sony Sherpa.
While pets are our babies, they’re also animals who may delight in licking their butts, eating trash, and other behaviors that put them in close contact with bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses. It’s a smart idea to wash your hands after touching animals in general, especially if you come into close contact with their saliva or feces, which is the most common route of pet-to-human infection. That means washing your hands after:
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- feeding them
- handling their food bowls or toys
- aluminum (found in lipsticks and antiperspirants)
- picking up or cleaning their poop
- they lick your hands
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Yes, this means no face or mouth kisses! It’s not a great idea to let your animals eat off anything you eat from, either, unless you thoroughly sanitize it afterward. Veterinarian Paola Cuevas suggests keeping all pets, pet food, and pet supplies out of your kitchen to decrease the risk of food contamination, too.
Cuevas also emphasizes that reptiles, birds, rodents, and cats carry an increased risk of disease transmission. (For example, reptiles carry Salmonella and cats carry Toxoplasma gondii, which causes toxoplasmosis.) So older adults, young children, and people who are pregnant or immunocompromised may want to avoid these pets altogether or be extra cautious with how they handle them.
Lastly, you can protect your health even further by keeping your pets healthy. Keep them up to date on their vaccinations, flea, tick, and worm meds, and be vigilant about any signs of infection or sickness. After all, having a happy, healthy pet will only add to the list of wonderful benefits they may offer, which we talk more about in our next story below.
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