8. Uncapping a syringe with one's teeth
10. Eating with same cutlery used for serving the cat food

I may not be in the animal health care business unless you consider "home health care" in that realm, but I'm equally guilty of a couple of these issues.

As an aside, today's Fully Vetted email notification was for yesterday's post.

Adding a comment to I can check the "Please notify me of additional comments" box.

Back when I did wildlife work in the summer, it was frequently too busy to take a lunch break. I always had little hand-held cups of tomato soup ready, and I would just drink them while I worked if I couldn't get a better lunch break. All too often I'd be plucking maggots from a wound while drinking... yum! To this day, I cannot eat tomato soup with rice.

Expressing anal gland while talking. Keep that mouth closed, folks.

THIS is why I could never do what you do! I am way too easily disgusted. Not when it comes to medical things, but poop, pee, vomit etc...no thank you! The worst of the worst for me is canned dog food. We have a foster right now who requires it and I have gagged each meal. Then I obsessively wash wash wash and scrub the sink to make sure not even a hint is left! I'm weird :)

And I too, got a notification for yesterdays post, today.

I had a roomie once who insisted we designate one spoon to be used for cat food (and there were no issues of cat pans in the sink or anything else). I found this ridiculous and absurd. Use a spoon, and wash it. My dogs eat off our plates. They go through the dishwasher (and I'd do the same even if I washed the plates by hand). The food we prepare for ourselves has bacteria, and if you exercise the same caution with all your plates and utensils, squeamishness just because it has been used by a pet is just a hang-up.

If your dog has giardia, maybe you want to break out the paper plates, or some serious disinfectant. But if your dog or cat is not sick with anything that can be passed to humans, worry about something real.

Things involving feces don't belong in a kitchen sink, though. I'll agree with that.

My first roommate in vet school decided halfway through second year that I was not allowed to wash my cat's dishes in the dishwasher anymore and flipped at me. Totally illogical. Because washing it with the scrub brush or sponge was somehow more sanitary than running it through the scalding hot dishwasher? Riiiight. She never did give me a good reason, nor did she do the darn dishes anyway, so I ignored it. Agreed that it would have been different had we been talking, say, the litter box.

The same roommate said I was overreacting when her awful (aggressive, constantly barking, completely untrained) dog was coming into my bedroom and crapping in my closet, or right in front of my door if he couldn't get in. Can't crate him while she's out, 'cause that's just mean! Can't keep him locked in her bedroom, he'd ruin everything. Always puzzled me that the actual unsanitary condition was no big deal, but a bit of cat saliva in the dishwasher was gross.

Needless to say, we shortly parted ways.

At our office we have to label our sugar, one is for our coffee and one for prolapsed rectums. The container is labeled Butt sugar, my friends think this is hilarious.

Unfortunatley in our area we have had some Rabies Positive cases which resulted in every raccoon, etc being brought to us for testing preparation. We did have to enact a strict no human food policy in the fridge with the possible rabid decapitated heads. I still kept finding their snacks in that fridge...Yuck!

Yes, that necropsy knife in the brownies story was mine (although it originally came from our state public health vet, of all people)... "But it's the sharpest knife we have!"

We had a scenario while I was on clinics where a large animal clinician tried to re-cap an 18 gauge needle by placing the cap on the needle, then pressing it on the rest of the way by pushing it against his chest (I guess it made sense at the time?). The cap fell off at some point and he ended up giving himself a pneumothorax after harpooning himself with the needle. Oops.

I am guilty of eating over the microscope, sharing my lunch with patients (especially parrots, tortoises, and bunnies, who are almost always excited to have a nibble of my fruit or salad), and accidentally stopping at the store on my way home from work, forgetting that my scrubs are splattered with blood/anal glands/pus/etc... sorry, real world!

I don't remember exactly, but it does sound like me!

In my younger years, decades ago, I worked in a 550 bed general hospital (pre-glove and pre-HIV), and you got over sights and smells in a hurry!

Otherwise, you'd never be able to eat lunch or drink a coffee.

Despite exposure to every body fluid imaginable, I was rarely sick.

A few co-workers at the PO wear gloves handling mail, not only to keep "prettier hands" but to avoid the germs from all over the country and they seem to be the ones most often sick!

HAHAHAHA....

My husband once got anal juice in his mouth. Ironic, cause I'm the talker in our family. REALLY ironic, because at the time he was complaining about having to do it. But you see, it was HIS dog, who is the ONLY dog to have the problem. So yeah, once out of every four or five times I supervise and make him do it. He got out a few words like "Gah! I hate doing ---!" and then it struck. I was so shocked the only thing I said was "And that's what you get for complaining about it."

I'm not a vet, but I've worked in a vet clinic, I've trained dogs for over a decade, and I've run a rescue for the last six years. Having up to 13 dogs in the house at any given times means we've just accepted that the dogs will track dirt and kitty litter into the bed. You can always tell when a dog has eaten kitty litter because you can smell it right AFTER they stick their tongue in your mouth. All the dishes are washed together, and aside from the actual stainless steel or BrakeFast bowls, we share dishes too. Dog spoons? Cat spoons? Come on, I don't have enough to keep track of?

My favourite though is when I share food off my fork with the dogs as I'm eating - which I don't do regularly, they're not allowed to beg. However, the probability of me doing it increases directly with the level of squeamishness I know I'll get from them. ;O) Drove my mom BONKERS. Not so much the feeding, but continuing to use the fork for myself... lol.