ohmidog!

An outbreak of Parvovirus, a serious and highly contagious dog disease, has forced Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter to temporarily close all dog housing.

Because of the illness, the city shelter ceased adopting out dogs about a week ago. The housing areas at BARCS will be closed to both the public and volunteers until at least Feb. 14, after which adoptions will continue. The shelter remains opens to those wishing to adopt cats, which are not affected by the disease.

Jennifer Mead-Brause, executive director of BARCS, said the outbreak was traced to two dogs that owners brought in to surrender about 10 days ago. In one case, the owner was aware the dog had the disease and told shelter staff, allowing them to take proper precautions.

In the second case, it was not known that the dog had the virus.

In all, eight dogs caught the disease, which Mead-Brause says appears to have been contained.

Dogs are remaining in quarantine for another week to make sure the virus, which has a two-week incubation period, doesn’t show up again.

“We’re waiting for that and just holding our breath,” she said.

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 Shepard Fairey, the Los-Angeles street artist whose Obama poster became an instant icon — and got him sued — has turned his skills to dogs, creating a mutt version of the red, white and blue poster to help support the cause of pet adoptions.

Four hundred limited edition prints are being offered online today by adoptapet.com, a non-profit pet organization, similar to petfinder.com, that helps shelters, humane societies and rescue group advertise their homeless pets to adopters for free.

Sales of the prints, signed and numbered by Fairey, are being sold at $200 each, with proceeds going to ”help animals in shelters and rescue groups to get seen and adopted,” the organization said.

To try and get one, or download your own smaller version, click here.

The poster is based on a photo by Clay Myers, professional animal welfare photographer, and Fairey used it with his permission.

For the Obama poster, he apparently neglected that step and, as a result, is being sued by the Associated Press for copyright infringement. The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation.

Also today, an exhibit of Fairey’s work, entitled Supply and Demand, is opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

North American wolves that are darker in color apparently inherited the trait from dogs.

Although it’s well known that dogs descended from wolves, National Geographic reports, a new study implies that some genetic material moved backward in the evolutionary chain.

Thousands of years ago, the researchers suggest, a few wolves mated with dogs — possibly pets kept by Native Americans — creating hybrid animals that passed on their genes. The study appears in this week’s issue of the journal Science.

Outside North America, where dark wolves can make up 10 to 70 percent of a given population, only Italy is known to have wolves with darker coats.

Scientists know there are particular gene receptors that cause dark colors in animals. But when Barsh and colleagues looked at variations of those genes in wolves and coyotes, they learned that those variations didn’t affect the color of the canines’ fur. Instead, a more unique gene that darkens fur in dogs was found in dark wolves and coyotes from Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park and the Canadian Arctic.

“It’s quite clear that black wolves are just as much wolf as a non-black wolf,” said study co-author Greg Barsh, a geneticist at Stanford University in California. But this small amount of dog genes may have given black-coated wolves a selective advantage.

“It does seem natural to say, Oh, well there’s more black wolves in the forest because that helps them blend into their environment,” Barsh said.

But wolves don’t depend on camouflage to hunt, biologists have found, suggesting that the benefit of being genetically coded for dark fur might not be related to color. It turns out the same gene is involved in humans in helping bolster the immune system to fight off infection, Barsh said.

The new study may also help conservation biologists think beyond traditional views on genetic diversity, Barsh added.

“There is sometimes one school of thought that to preserve species diversity is to keep the natural population pure,” he said. “This is an example where preserving genetic diversity has in fact been facilitated by a hybridization event with a domesticated animal.”

A Navy soldier has been reunited with the dog she rescued in Iraq.

Construction Mechanic First Class Joan Steates, who along with fellow Seabees took in a stray shepherd-mix pup named Sako, was forced to leave her behind when she came home in October.

On Monday night, they reunited at Dulles Airport, throught the efforts of SPCA International’s Operation Baghdad Pups, which provides veterinary care, clearance and transportation for animals that U.S. service members can’t bear to leave behind in the Middle East.

In the past year year, Baghdad Pups has brought 79 dogs and cats from Iraq and Afghanistan. 50 other reunions are in the works.

The SPCA says the program, funded entirely by donations, spends about $4,000 to ship each animal to the U.S.

Lisha, a nine-year-old Labrador, is helping raise three month-old tiger cubs whose mother rejected them — and that’s just the latest in the long line of species she has suckled.

A resident of the Cango Wildlife Reserve in the Oudsthoorn area of South Africa, Lisha has served as a substitute mom for more than 30 orprhaned animals, including a porcupine and a hippo.

“We have had Lisha since she was a puppy,” said owner Nadine Hall. “‘It is all about her conditioning and fear. We noticed early on that she didn’t care if it was a cat or a porcupine. She would just walk up and lick the creature she was caring for. Although in the case of the porcupine that was more amusing.”

Mrs. Hall and her husband Rob, who is director of the Cango park, realized their dog had a unique gift and started bringing orphaned animals home for her to raise.

“If Lisha sees an animal being brought back in a box, she automatically assumes that it is to be cared for,” Mrs Hall said.

Lisha has never had her own litter.

You can see the family’s other photos in yesterday’s Daily Mail.