A front loader should have a clean cycle that you're supposed to run it through (once a month or so, IIRC) -- perhaps now would be a good time to run it through that cycle.
Juan can probably speak better to this, but the only time you don't want to use water is when it's on the skin, because it'll spread it before it dilutes it, but even in the cases of emergency, you still want to run water -- you just want to make sure you use enough water to completely wash it off. Juan, I realize this isn't your area of expertise, but is this something you know about?