Kissing Your Dog Isn’t Always the Best Idea

Sure, it's a sweeps month story, but a television station in Orlando found two families where "kissing" the dog was routine and then swabbed the dogs' mouths and sent the swabs off to a lab to be analyzed.

First the bad news, according to ClickOrlando.com, both dogs' mouths were teeming with bacteria, including one that's related to gonorrhea and one that's associated with bacteria found in hot tubs that is antibiotic resistant. The good news, according to the article, is that the dogs' mouths have bacteria killing enzymes that should take care of the nasty buggers, although apparently the enzymes hadn't gotten around to killing the bacteria found on the swab.

Clickorlando.com quotes a doctor who says the only people who might have trouble after kissing their dogs are people with compromised immune systems; so for the rest of you: pucker up!