No! Stop! It turns out your shouldn’t let your dog piss all over your Switch. This is the radical new advice coming from Nintendo Japan’s customer service, where a statement posted on X explains that pet urine will, in fact, cause your electronic devices some manner of harm.
This rather peculiar message appeared on the official Nintendo Support X account for Japan, in which it warned pet owners against leaving their Nintendo Switch unsupervised around their animals.
Via machine translation (and indeed via Nintendo Life), Nintendo’s message explains that “When you take your eyes off it, your pet turns your Nintendo Switch into a toy!” I mean, that’s a bit unfair, it is already pretty much a toy. It seems it’s more that the company is worried they’ll play with it the wrong way. “By the time you notice, it’s already covered in drool…”
I have three cats, and I can’t say this has ever proved an issue. My ten-year-old is far more likely to cover the screen in that inexplicable sticky residue all children exude, even more so than Archie, the giant, lumbering ginger. Although, in fairness, I don’t own a slavering St. Bernard or Mastiff, leaving those ghastly tendrils of slobber everywhere they go. I wouldn’t want one of those playing Zelda on my device.
The tweet continues, “Pet saliva and urine can cause the device to malfunction due to water exposure. If you have pets, be careful about where you place your Switch.”
“Pets” seems to be doing rather a lot of work, trying to cover up for the real culprits here: dogs. Just name them, Nintendo. Stop trying to be all woke and refusing to profile. We’ve also got a pet corn snake, and I’m not in the least concerned about Cornflake running my Switch under the faucet.
However, according to the image accompanying the warning, it looks like Nintendo might be more concerned about rabid foxes than anything else.
Look, it’s good advice. You should stop your pets from peeing on your electronic devices. You also shouldn’t put them through the washing machine, run them over with your car, or drop them into a volcano.
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