Recently, I was asked to dog sit for a family friend. At the time, I was suffering from a cold and had been coughing and sneezing all week. I wasn’t sure if I would be completely healthy before it was time to visit the dogs (side note, “visit the dogs” sounds like the step just before you “kick the bucket”).
That got me wondering…
Can A Dog Catch A Cold From You?
Dogs can in fact catch a cold. However, they can’t not catch it from you (unless you are another dog reading this). According to Scott Weese, the Canada research chair in zoonotic diseases and an associate professor at the Ontario Veterinary College, “There’s no concern with dog-to-human, or human-to-dog, transmission.” Dogs only get the flu or a cold from other dogs.
Cats, on the other hand, are a different story. A cat can catch a cold or flu from a human. “The virus attaches to cells in the respiratory tract of felines similarly to how it does in humans,” says Weese. There have been reports of H1N1 found in cats in the United States. Like dogs, cats transmit viruses among one another. But don’t worry crazy cat ladies, humans can’t catch those.
Fun fact: the information I used in this post was originally published in a 2011 article of Best Health, titled “Cat-choo!” Great title!
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