My cat is kind of weird. I mainly only feed her wet food because of some tooth loss issues. I’d like to say “I wash the dish when she’s done eating”, but she’s never done eating. She doesn’t eat all her food at once and then hang out, but instead budgets her food out until the next feeding time. So pretty much there is always food in it. I try to rinse it out when I feed her each time, but I don’t do a hardcore soap and water wash more than once a week. I do rinse her water dish out and replace the water once or twice a day.
nevermind
Outside and inside dry food is in dispensers or stainless steel bowls.
Outside water is in dispensers that get washed when needed or emptied.
Inside water in a ceramic bowl, rinsed daily.
All wet food goes in disposable dishes, thrown away daily.
Bad for the environment, but I hatehatehate yucky pet food messes.
I wash the water bowl every day, or every time I refill it, whichever. I wash the dog food dish if I think about it but it’s rarely empty (he’s a dainty eater) and he only gets dry kibble (Nutro lamb & rice, small bites.) Also, I let him lick my cereal bowl clean and eat off my fork.
Then everything gets hand washed. So yes, I do it to the same level as my own dishes. 
Oh my god, I hardly ever wash the dog’s bowls. I am a slob and a terrible dog owner.
Story about my college roommate’s mother. She would never fill the sink with suds and wash dishes in it because the dog’s bowl had been in the sink. It had touched the sink. Even if the sink had been scribbed with Comet, she considered it permanently contaminated.
She would fill another container with sudsy water and wash from there.
Only if there’s a little bit of space left in the dishwasher that I need to fill to have a complete load.
I am the worst human on the planet. I probably wash my 5 dogs’ food bowls every 3 months. I feed them exclusively dry food–with the exception of my oldest–and they eat at will, so there’s almost always somebody eating. Once in a while when I drink too much coffee and get on a cleaning binge, I toss their food dishes in the dishwasher. My old dog only eats soft food (kibble soaked in water and gravy from a jar, with shredded turkey or ham, cheese, and beans [I’m such a weirdo]), so her dishes get washed daily.
The water dishes get rinsed out daily and soaked in vineger water and washed once a week because we give them unsoftened water, and here that means a hard, white coating builds up pretty fast.
Every time the dogs get raw, the bowls are washed immediately. Other than that, every time there is room in the dishwasher, so probably every 2 days or so.
The cat dishes get washed after each meal (2X/day), but it is just a matter of getting out another one and throwing the old one in the dishwasher.
We went to Savers and bought a bunch of old saucers and forks so that we didn’t have to keep washing the cats’ dishes, or running out of our own silverware. I suppose that makes us the only folks with a cabinet for just the pet’s dishes, huh?
I wash both bowls every morning, then give them fresh water and new food.
I don’t wash my dog’s food bowl: she eats dry food, and the only thing going into the bowl is more dry food. I usually rinse her water bowl out in the sink before filling it with fresh water, but that only gets actually cleaned if she spent the day outside, and it got dirty while it was out with her.
I don’t feel like a bad pet owner at all for it, either. The bowls are stainless steel: what’s going to grow on them?
Every few weeks or when my mother is coming over.
This is me. I have had Soloman for about a year and a half now, and I don’t think I have ever cleaned his food bowl. The same for the cats. They all eat dry food, so there is no mess.
They haven’t boycotted me yet.
My cat Irving drinks with her feet (dip, lick, dip, lick) so the water bowl gets washed about every 15 freaking minutes.
Food dishes are more sporadic.
Both dogs get fed dry food floated on water, and the older one gets half a small can of wet food at each feeding. We rinse them out each time. After the older one is done the younger one licks his bowl, just in case.
Water dishes get rinsed when being refilled.
No soap, but we use a paper towel if the bowl seems sticky. They like their food too much to leave any.
I have to separate the water bowl from the food dish or my cat will immediately drop dry cat food in it. I wash the food dish when it looks grody and I clean the water dish every other day. Cleaning consists of wiping it dry and rinsing it out.
We have a feral cat and wash her dishes every day.
Problem is we have other feral cats in the area and we don’t always know if they
have mooched from our cat’s gourmet food and Evian water.
But true. we wash every day.
Oh. We feed our cat canned meat, Kit 'n Kaboodle and well water. She will NOT eat people food.
Do I wash them? All the time. I’ve just finished washing them, in fact.
I usually try to wash out the water bowl every day or two – there’s some sort of algae or bacteria growing in it that you can feel when you rub your fingers over the inside surface.
The cat is frigging ancient and all she will eat is wet food so the bowl gets washed when she is finished. She DEMANDS milk every morning so that bowl gets washed daily too.
The dog has dry food (and all the left overs but they are not in her bowl) and that bowl is washed…hmmmm I’m sure it was washed sometime, probably…maybe.
They share several water bowls (though I’m not sure the cat drinks water unless it is in the bottom of the shower) and they get a quick rinse when refilled.
Dogs and cats show us they don’t care about clean bowls everyday…they lick their arses!
We have two rats, and we wash their food bowl in the dishwasher every day. We have two identical bowls so there’s always food in the cage.
If we give them a small bowl of water, it doesn’t stay there longer than a day, and gets washed in the dishwasher after each use. The water bottle gets thoroughly rinsed each day and washed about twice a week.
I’ve noticed the slime too, before I started washing the bowl more often, and it built up even if a rinse was done. It actually needed to be wiped out with a cloth.