Imagine this, you’ve just come home from a stressful day at work and as soon as you enter your home, you are welcomed with an affectionate lick on your face by your pet dog. Sounds really heartwarming and pleasant, right? But be careful, as according to an article in The Conversation by Jacqueline Boyd, a senior lecturer in Animal Science at Nottingham Trent University the affectionate lick by a dog can actually do more harm than good.

While licking is an essential action for dogs. They use this action to show happiness, stress or fear and also use licking as a behavioural response to the owner’s emotional state and when they see angry faces. It is also stated in the article that for people who are immunocompromised, have open wounds, or have a dog that has a track record of eating faeces, it's best to avoid face licks.

According to Boyd, a dog's mouth has several microorganisms that are low risk for humans, giving the rise to the myth that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human. However, there are rare cases when certain infections can pass from dogs to humans by bites, licks or scratches. For instance, Capnocytophaga canimorsus, a bacteria found in the mouths of up to 75% of otherwise healthy dogs and cats, can cause life-threatening sepsis. Other microbes like Pasteurella multocida can also spread by contact with dog saliva, resulting in meningitis. It is also said that dog salive can be a source of bacteria carrying antibiotic-resistant genes. 

A German study of 2,800 hospital patients and their companion animals in 2023 proved "that the sharing of multidrug-resistant organisms between companion animals and their owners is possible." However, the study identified only a handful of cases. Thus, the researchers concluded that "cat or dog ownership isn't a significant risk factor for multidrug-resistant organism colonisation in hospital patients."

To speak in brief about what can be inferred from the article is that a dog can have healing effects on your mental health. However, allowing animals to lick open wounds can put the owner at an increased risk of infection.

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