ohmidog!

The same gene that causes some breeds of dogs to have short, stubby legs might also cause dwarfism in people, a new study says.

Scientists think this gene — called a retrogene — controls certain growth receptors. By comparing breeds like basset hounds, corgis and dachsunds to longer-legged breeds,  scientists isolated the gene that stunted growth in dogs, according to a paper in the new issue of the journal Science.

This gene hasn’t “been associated with dwarfism in the past,” says Heidi Parker, first author of the study, so it “opens up a new avenue, a new place to look,” for the cause of some types in humans

Parker, of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., compared the genomes of 95 short-legged dogs from eight breeds with the genomes of 702 dogs from 64 breeds without the trait. Then, in a more detailed analysis, the researchers pinpointed an extra stretch of DNA on chromosome 18 in every dog from the eight short-legged breeds, but in none of 204 control dogs they examined, according to an article in Science News.

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Mosby, a 3-year-old golden retriever who was deemed too friendly for work as an assistance dog for the disabled, has found a purpose in God’s house.

Mosby is a ministry dog, one of a growing breed of assistance dogs assigned to clergy and church workers. He was featured in a Boston Globe article yesteday.

A few times each week, Mosby visits hospitals and assisted living centers. But his busiest day is Sunday, when he can be found in a pew alongside his owners, Lynda and Larry Fisher, at the First Baptist Church of Littleton, where they are longtime members and he’s the official greeter.

“A dog ministry breaks down barriers right away,’’ said the Rev. Deborah Blanchard. “It helps put aside the barriers and connect on a real level to offer comfort and love.’’

The idea of a formal training program for ministry dogs sprang up just over a decade ago, when a divinity student and dog lover made a case to NEADS, Dogs for Deaf and Disabled Americans, a nonprofit organization based in Princeton, Mass., that is one of the nation’s largest assistance-dog training programs.

“She explained how she’d be going to hospices and working with the elderly and sick children, all populations who can’t have a dog but could really benefit,’’ said Sheila O’Brien, the agency’s chief executive officer. “She said, ‘You know, Sheila, dog spelled backwards is God.’ ’’

NEADS has trained more than 15 dogs as ministry dogs since 1998.

Lynda Fisher approached NEADS  last year in hopes of being matched with a ministry dog afer she and her husband, Larry, lost their dog, a 15-year-old Brittany spaniel named Jessie.

“I told them, ‘I’m a deaconess at my church. Part of my duties is to visit the sick and infirm, and it would go so much better with a dog,’ ’’ Fisher recalled.

Although the dogs are generally designated for ministers, Fisher’s 40-year affiliation with First Baptist and enthusiastic devotion to her faith, and to dogs, won her an exception to the rule.

Two red panda cubs abandoned by their mother at birth are thriving at a northern China zoo thanks to milk and loving care from a tiny dog serving as surrogate mother.

You can see a photo here.

The cubs, born June 25, were abandoned immediately by their mother after giving birth in front of a crowd of visitors at the Taiyuan Zoo in northern China’s Shanxi province, according to Ha Guojiang, a zoo employee quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.

“No one knew she was pregnant. Her plump body and bushy hair disguised her protruding belly until the babies were born,” said Ha. “We hurriedly went about to find a wet nurse for them.”

The dog wet nurse, belonging to a farmer from a nearby suburb, was selected from two other candidates that had recently given birth, according to an Associated Press story.

The dog is now raising the two panda cubs like its own pups, sometimes even refusing to feed its own pup, said Ha.

At 3-weeks-old, the baby cubs have yet to open their eyes and have doubled in length to 8 inches, Xinhua reported.

Unlike the more well-known, giant pandas, red pandas resemble raccoons with long bushy tails. There are believed to be fewer than 2,500 adult red pandas in the world.

Dogs can have it rough on Indian reservations, but two women — former co-workers now living 90 miles apart – are doing their best to rescue those in need and find them new homes.

Mary Williams,  a clinical nurse at the Crownpoint Health Care Facility in Crownpoint, N.M., has been rescuing dogs from the Navajo reservation for more than three years.

And Luisa Alvarez, a former co-worker of Williams is now operating a similar dog Rescue in Fort Defiance, Ariz., where she started taking in strays not long after moving there.

Both find homes for those dogs they can, and take the others to no-kill shelters in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M., and Boulder, Colo.

Between them, the two women have saved more than a thousand dogs and cats, according to an article on Reznet, a Native American news website.

Last year Navajo Nation Animal Control responded to 286 dog attacks and impounded more than 6,000 animals, including cats, said Olin Arviso, animal control manager at Fort Defiance, Ariz. The shelter euthanizes about 80 percent of the animals, according to the article, which noted dogs are far from pampered on the reservation.

“They’re not companions or friends, they’re expected to protect,” said an instructor from the Navajo Technical College. “The dog doesn’t really have any significance. In the Navajo way, a dog is not allowed in the hogan — inside the living quarters.”

On the reservation, dogs are often abandoned in the wilderness, drowned, or left on the highway. Many just roam, attached to no particular owner.

“I believe that every soul … deserves a chance at a good life,” Alvarez said. “There is no reason for the suffering that we see surrounding us.”

(Photo courtesy of RezNet, a project of the University of Montana School of Journalism; by Andi Murphy, a Navajo journalism student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, serving this summer as editor of the Crownpoint Baahane’, a community newsletter in Crownpoint, N.M.)