Microbial testing for dogs is crucial after the Covid lockdowns.

The ‘killing off’ of old friends.

Hand sanitisers kill off both good and bad bacteria, including multiple numbers of ‘old friends' that have evolved together with humans and animals for hundreds of years.

Though dogs didn’t use hand sanitiser, human-to-dog transmission of the ‘old friends’ during the pandemic, was badly affected by the lockdown and overzealous hygiene routines. Eventually, transmission ceased to happen all together, there was no sharing of 'old friends'.

It took some months, the first signs appeared in December 2020, 10 months after the announcement in March 2020, we became aware of an unusual microbiome profile devoid of the population of transient bacteria shared by the dog and his human. The new profile had an increased level of bacteria linked to inflammation and was similar to the profiles of humans during the lockdowns.

‘Old friends’ prime the immune system, without them are we are likely to see an increase in humanimal allergies, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases, and cancer?

Some ‘old friends’ are linked to the brain through the gut-brain axis, should we then expect an increase in anxiety?

The good news is many dogs have recovered some of their ‘old friends’ hopefully these will soon spread to others, the best way to speed up the repopulation process is to get out and be up close and personal with as many humanimals as possible!

The PetBiome Microbial testing for dogs is crucial in the post covid era as over 50% of dogs are still affected with high numbers of inflammatory bacteria and poor diversity.