ohmidog!

 
Short, shaggy, smooth or wiry, nearly all the differences in dogs’ coat types result from variations in just three genes, according to newly published research.

Variations in the DNA  in more than 1,000 dogs from 80 breeds were studied by the researchers, and compared to descriptions of various coat types, according to an Associated Press report.

The study, published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science, found that nearly all of the varieties of dog coats can be accounted for by combinations of genes called RSPO2, FGF5 and KRT71.

“What’s important for human health is the way we found the genes involved in dog coats and figured out how they work together, rather than the genes themselves,” said Dr. Elaine A. Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda.

“We think this approach will help pinpoint multiple genes involved in complex human conditions, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity,” Ostrander, chief of the cancer genetics branch, said in a statement.

The findings apply to purebred dogs: “We don’t know enough about the genetics of mutts,” commented co-author K. Gordon Lark, a biology professor at the University of Utah.

Dogs are descended from wolves and, like wolves, short-haired dogs such as beagles had only the ancestral forms of the three genes, none with variations.

Dogs like President Obama’s Portuguese Water Dog have variations in all three genes, producing animals with curly hair plus a “mustache” and large eyebrows.

Offspring of Snuppy — the world’s first cloned dog — are being offered to the public by Seoul National University, where Snuppy was created in 2005.

The Korea Times reports that applications are being accepted, and the nine puppies will be given to good homes at no charge.

The puppies aren’t clones themselves, but are the offspring of Snuppy and two female Afghans that were cloned at SNU to serve as his girlfriends, and for research purposes — namely to determine whether two cloned dogs can produce pups the natural way, or at least through artificial insemination.

Snuppy became a father in May last year after impregnating the two female clones, named Bona and Hope. It was the world’s first successful breeding involving only cloned canines. One of the 10 puppies died after birth, but the remaining nine — six males and three females — remain healthy.

Lee Byeong-chun, one of the leaders of the team that created Snuppy, said the school will take online applications until Oct. 31 and offer the puppies to  pet owners for free after a screening process. Each dog will be spayed or neutered.

“We will look through the applications and give the dogs to owners who we believe are most capable of raising them,” Lee said.

Lee’s team used artificial insemination to impregnate the two cloned Afghan hound females with Snuppy’s sperm last year.

Lee collaborated with now-disgraced gene scientist Hwang Woo-suk in the creation of Snuppy in 2005. Hwang was fired from SNU in the following year after his work on cloned human stem cells was exposed as fraudulent.

Since then, both men have continued to clone dogs — Lee at SNU and Hwang at a private facility he opened outside Seoul in 2007.

Lee had also announced plans to mate the world’s first cloned wolf, born in 2006, with other cloned wolves. Those plans took a blow earlier this week when the world’s first cloned wolf, Snuwolf, was found dead in a Seoul zoo.

(Photo: By John Woestendiek)

How do you get a 120-pound mastiff out of the bottom of a narrow 30-foot well?

You crawl down it — even knowing the dog’s name is “Kujo” — harness him up with rope, and get everybody to help pull.

In Suitland, Md. last Friday, Prince George’s County firefighter Travis Lambert was lowered into the well to rescue Daniel Ellis’ dog. The two men, and Kujo, appeared on the Today Show Tuesday.

Apparently Kujo had climbed under the deck to seek shelter from the rain and fell through a piece of rotting plywood covering a defunct well. Police were called. They determined it was a job for the fire department, who in turn called on the department’s rescue team.

Rescuers set up a pulley system to haul the dog out of the well. Lambert said he was in the well for about 15 minutes and that Kujo was cooperative.

A little more than four hours after falling down the hole, Kujo was brought back to ground level amid cheers from rescue crew and onlookers. Kujo, the Today Show reported, didn’t go to his owner first — instead he climbed on Lambert and gave him a big lick.

A California dog owner is offering a $3,000 reward for the return of her two pit bull puppies.

The two 10-week-old pups, named Chocolate and Ashley, disappeared from the backyard of Fair Norton’s home in Hayward Aug. 12, according to the Oakland Tribune. Norton suspects they went through a hole in the fence.

A pet detective, hired for $600, used a bloodhound to determine the pups had followed a creek bed into a quarry. But the trail ended there.

“I just have a feeling that somebody has them,” Norton said. “If something happened to them, we would have seen something … someone would have found a dead dog.”

Norton said the dogs were early wedding gifts from a cousin who owns the puppies’ parents.

Chocolate is brown and white, with green and hazel eyes and a brown and pink spotted nose. He has a brown leather studded collar. Ashley is gray and white, with steel gray eyes and a black leather collar. Both have white-tipped tails.

Anyone with information may call Norton at 323-384-1640 or 209-834-4317.

A team of Swedish and Chinese researchers say they have pinpointed — at least more than it has been pinpointed up to now — the place where, 16,000 years ago, the wolf was tamed and evolved into the dog.

It was in China, on the southern shores of the Yangtze River, they say.

Their findings are contained in an article in the latest issue of scientific journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

“For the first time … it is possible to provide a detailed picture of the dog, with its birthplace, point in time, and how many wolves were tamed,” says Peter Savolainen, a biologist and member of the research team at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.

Together with Swedish colleagues and a Chinese research team, Savolainen has made a number of new discoveries about the history of the dog — including the most specific date and birthplace yet offered.

“Our earlier findings from 2002 have not been fully accepted, but with our new data there will be greater acceptance. The picture provides much more detail,” says Savolainen.

Savolainen said the research indicates that the dog has a single geographic origin but descends from a large “large number of animals – at least several hundred tamed wolves, probable even more,” according to Science Daily.

The theory that the domestic dog originated in East Asia was challenged earlier this month by an international group of researchers who say African dogs are just as genetically diverse.

That research, based on analyzing blood samples from dogs in Egypt, Uganda and Namibia, shows the DNA of dogs in African villages is just as varied, indicating it could have been where wolves made the transition to become dogs.

(Photo: Science Daily press release)

An Onslow County, N.C. couple appeared in court Tuesday to face charges of child abuse after a dog they were pet-sitting chewed the toes off the left foot of their four-month-old son.

The child is reported in stable condition.

Robie Lynn Jenkins, 20, and Tremayne Spillman, 23, were asleep in their Jacksonville home when the dog, described in news reports as a pit bull, attacked the child.

Authorities say Jenkins was on medication and didn’t hear the attack, which occurred in the same room while the baby was sleeping on a fold-out couch. Jenkins was sleeping in another room and didn’t hear the child crying.

Columnist Ronnie Polaneczky paid a touching tribute to her dog, Blackie, in yesterday’s Philadelphia Daily News.

Blackie, a female border collie-Labrador mix, died on Sunday evening after a sudden illness.

“I was so overcome with tears as she died, I was unable to properly tell her all the ways that her life had made mine better,” Polaneczky wrote. “So this is my thank-you letter to Blackie, the first dog I ever called my own.”

Nine years ago, Daily New columnist Stu Bykofsky offered her the dog, which he had taken in after finding it abandoned in South Philly. Here’s an excerpt from Polaneczky’s column:

“Thank you for tolerating the way we claimed that you had magic ‘healing powers.’ See, not long after you came into our lives, we discovered that our daughter’s bumps and scrapes didn’t hurt her so much once we had her press the injured area into your warm, shaggy coat. Soon, she was telling her young friends to use your powers when they were hurt, too.

“Over time, we realized that those powers were not a parent-created myth but a true ability. When my husband and I were distressed about something, you’d sense our upset and quietly lean against us in solemn comfort.

“Thank you for letting us dress you as a bee on Halloween.

“Thank you for never – ever – chewing our shoes into jerky.

“Thank you for having a gentle spirit that belied your fierce appearance. The first time my husband took you to the schoolyard to retrieve our daughter from kindergarten, a few of the parents pulled their children away in fear of your wolfish looks. Within moments, you were sprawled on your back, a portrait of maternal contentment as a dozen tiny hands rubbed up and down on your belly.

“Thank you for your tolerance of your four-legged housemates. You put up with one prickly cat until his death at 19. You endured the addition of two kittens, who tried to nurse at your row of tiny teats. And then you gamely allowed the latest member of the family, a tiny Yorkie with a brain the size of an M&M, to use your belly like a trampoline, grabbing at your ears and snout while you lolled placidly on the floor.

“Through all of it, you’d look at us with world-weary affection, as if to say, ‘These little ones, eh? Waddya gonna do?’

“We were there with you at the end, at Penn’s veterinary hospital, to sob goodbyes and stroke your soft, dark fur as you peacefully slipped away from us. The doctor had told us that the illness in your lungs was slowly suffocating you and had caused an en

Bo Obama has chewed up the First Family’s stray socks, torn up a magazine (we’re guessing National Review), and gnawed on the president’s gym shoes.

In other words, he’s a normal dog.

Except for the fact that he lives in the White House — and that accounts for this lengthy but not especially revealing Associated Press article on life with Bo.

The article says most of Bo’s days begin with early morning walks on the grounds with Michelle Obama, and end with a nighttime trek with the president.

“I’m the guy with the night shift,” President Obama told one television interviewer. “We go out and we’re walking and I’m picking up poop and in the background is the beautifully lit White House. It’s quite a moment.”

Bo came to the family by way of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., owned three of the breed.

Five recent movies have slapped the “No animals were harmed” disclaimer on their end-credits without the permission of the organization that trademarked the phrase.

The American Humane Association, which monitors movie productions in which animals appear, says the five movies used the disclaimer without its approval.

The association has sent the studios and distributors connected to each production a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the unauthorized disclaimers be removed immediately from the theatrical and DVD versions of the movies.

The association identified the movies as:

Adam by Olympus Pictures, Deer Path Productions, Serenade Films, Vox3 Films.

District 9 by WingNut Films Limited, Key Creatives and LLC/QED Intl.

Easy Virtue by Ealing Studios, Fragile Films, Endgame Ent., Odyssey Ent.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Number 9 Films.

Shrink by Ignite Entertainment, Ignite Productions, Ithaka Entertainment and Trigger Street Productions.

American Humane said the registered disclaimer, when properly obtained, assures the public that animal actors used in productions were not killed or injured in any way, and that their well-being and safety were monitored by the association’s certified animal safety representatives.

The 130-year-old organization said the movie companies are misleading the public and creating “a significant breach of trust with audiences” by inserting the credit without authorization.

Some of the studios and producers have indicated they will remove the illegitimate credit, while others are making excuses or taking no action, American Humane said.

“We encourage filmmakers to work with American Humane, and for distributors to verify the legitimacy of the ‘No Animals Were Harmed’® credit, before approving and finalizing any film prints for theatrical release or DVD distribution,” said Karen Rosa, American Humane’s vice president in charge of its Film & TV Unit.  “Viewers, too, should always look for the ‘No Animals Were Harmed’® end credit, and they can check our website to see what rating we assigned to films, based on their use of animals, and to find out how the animal action was achieved on films that we monitored.”

Chanel, the wiry-haired dachshund who held the Guinness World Record for oldest dog, died Friday, People Pets reports.

Chanel was 21, according to her owners, Karl and Denice Shaughnessy.

Chanel gained notoriety this past spring after an appearance on the Today show where she was presented with an official certificate as the world’s oldest living pooch.

She will be listed in the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records, scheduled for publication this October.