Proctor says people should be aware that not all dogs want to be hugged or kissed. “I still don’t let Sunny and Bo lick me, because when I walk them on the side lawn, some of the things I see them picking up and chewing on, I don’t want that, man,” Mr. President Obama even touched on the subject in an interview with Wired magazine that was published in August: More commonly, a parasite can be contracted by ingesting contaminated soil - via a home garden, for example - where pets have left their droppings.
Sarah Proctor, a clinical assistant professor and the director of the veterinary technology program at the University of New Hampshire, said in an email. It is conceivable that a dog with fecal material in its mouth could transmit an intestinal parasite to a human through licking, but that is rare, Dr. He said a client’s child at his practice in Greensboro, N.C., nearly lost an eye from a roundworm infection. Joe Kinnarney, the immediate past president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, said in an interview that one study calculated that a puppy could have as many as 20 million to 30 million roundworm eggs in its intestinal tract in one week. Other infections, such as hookworms and roundworms, can be transmitted in a practice called coprophagia, in which animals ingest one another’s stool or by licking each others’ anuses, Dr.
“Dogs spend half of their life with their noses in nasty corners or hovering over dog droppings so their muzzles are full of bacteria, viruses and germs of all sorts.” What other illnesses can be transmitted? “It is not just what is carried in saliva,” he said. John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London and an expert in microbiology, said he would never let a dog lick his face, The Hippocratic Post reported.