According to Dr Kate Stenske, a clinical assistant professor at K-State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the human-animal bonding behaviours like sleeping with the dog or getting licked at face aren’t more likely to spread germs.

However, it did show an association between antibiotic-resistant E coli and owners who didn’t wash their hands after petting their dogs or before cooking meals.

"We know diseases can be shared between dogs and people," Stenske said.

"About 75 per cent of emerging diseases are zoonotic, meaning they are transferable between humans and other animals. With these two pieces of knowledge, I wanted to examine the public health aspects of such activities," she added.

For the study, the researchers used E coli bacteria, which is common in the gastrointestinal tracts of both dogs and humans.

"People have it, dogs have it, and it normally doesn’t cause any problems. But it can acquire genes to make it antibiotic resistant," she said.

They examined faecal samples from dogs and their owners and looked at the bacteria’s DNA fingerprints.

She found that 10 per cent of dog-human pairs shared the same E coli strains.

She also found that the E coli had more resistance to common antibiotics than expected, although the owners had more multiple-drug resistant strains than their pets.

"This makes us think that dogs are not likely to spread multiple drug-resistant E coli to their owners, but perhaps owners may spread them to their dogs," Stenske said.