Pure Dog Talk

Short-legged dogs and Wrap-around fronts Theresa Nesbitt is a retired ob-gyn physician with a focus on skeletal abnormalities. Her hobby is breeding and exhibiting Glen of Imaal Terriers and Dachshunds. The combination of these two passions led her to extensive study of the conformation of purpose bred, short-legged dogs and wrap-around fronts. “It’s an interesting puzzle,” Nesbitt said. “There is a lot of overlap between the breeds that have this conformation.” Genetics and expression of dwarfism Researchers have just recently identified the genes responsible for this function, Nesbitt said. “It’s a very, very old gene,” Nesbitt observed. “And a very interesting kind of gene. Literally it made a second copy, snuck back into the nucleus and puts itself on the recipe book. Two copies of the gene and the second one doesn’t have instructions. We call it a retro gene.” Understanding how and why genes turn on and off is going to help the medical field understand cancers and more in the future, Nesbitt noted Wha