Ishi- It will definitely get dirty, especially working on animals, blood will nasty it up, but 550 cord being largely polymer fibers (I'm largely assuming, but I'm pretty sure since it melts), it shouldn't retain the stain too much. I would guess that if you really wanted to pretty it up again, you could just handwash it in mild detergent and it would clean up pretty well. Might be hard to do on the blade though.

Worst case scenario, it's cheap, buy more!