🧬 You Can Clone Your Dog (Seriously...)

In Today’s Email:

• The (not so) circle of life? Welcome to the age of cloning.

• 3 Months Lost at Sea and Rescued: “Ahoy, Bella!”

• “The Squeeze” aka The Internet’s Best Dog News in 60 seconds.

• The Last Laugh: What we’re laughing with. Not at.

Want Your Best Friend to Live Forever? Clone Him.

No, you’re not watching a science fiction movie, but it certainly feels like it.

One company has the patented technology to clone cats, dogs and horses, and will do it for you right now – for a price.

Let’s get right into it…

Viagen charges $50,000 to clone a dog. Cloning a cat will set you back $35,000, and for all of you horse owners: $85,000. Not quite couch change…

So, what exactly does the price of a luxury car get you?

First, Viagen needs a skin sample from a pet that’s either still alive or just recently died. A lot of people turn to the company right after their pet dies, said spokesperson Melain Rodriguez, and it’s possible to do successfully if the death was within a few days ago and the body has been kept refrigerated.

Gone are the days of deciding between cremating or burying your fur baby.

The sample is then shipped to the company’s lab in Texas, where cells from the skin are cultured. It takes a few weeks for those cells to grow and multiply until there are approximately 1,000,000 cells. Those are then harvested, frozen and stored as long as they’re needed. (Viagen charges a lower rate for this genetic preservation: $1,600 plus an annual fee of $150)

That’s just phase one…

When it’s time to clone the pet, the lab scientists will take an egg from a donor pet and remove that egg’s nucleus. Then, a nucleus from one of the millions of cells grown in Viagen’s lab is swapped in, giving that egg the nuclear DNA of your original pet.

We’ve seen Jurassic Park. What haven’t we seen here?

…Their proprietary next step, which is essentially giving the egg “a little jolt of electricity,” making it think it’s fertilized without any sperm. 🤔

The jolted egg then begins to multiply and grow into an embryo, which is then implanted in a surrogate animal, eventually giving birth to your cloned pet. Voila!

The process boasts an identical, genetic twin to your dog; however, should you expect identical appearances?

Human identical twins have the same DNA, but if human identical twins have freckles, their freckles are never exactly the same and in the same spot. The same example can be used for birthmarks.

Speak to me in dog terms please!

Fine…if your dog has a white stripe down the middle of its forehead, the clone will typically have a white stripe on its head too – but it just might not be the exact same size or placement. Make sense?

What about the clone’s personality?

The pet’s personality is a bit harder to predict. “That’s probably the No. 1 question that we get: what is the personality of the clone going to be like compared to the original one?” Rodriguez said.

While the personalities of the clone and the original may differ, their general dispositions are usually alike. If your dog is very fearful, there’s a good chance its clone will be too. If your dog is more laidback, the clone will probably be pretty chill.

“Temperament and intelligence have shown to have a very strong genetic component, so those are things that we see that are very similar in the cloned animals,” she said.

Personality is a mix of genetics and environment, explained Rodriguez. “We caution the client to not expect a reincarnation of the original pet.”

If I have $50,000 and want to do this, what are the concerns?

Ethically speaking? A lot.

The main ethical concern about cloning a pet is that doing so doesn’t actually provide any medical benefit to the health of a pet or to people, explains Robert Klitzman. He’s the director of bioethics—the ethics of medical and biological research—at Columbia University in New York City. “A cloned pet is basically a luxury item,” he says.

Here are the main arguments against the science:

• Using Dogs As “Lab Rats”

  • First, dog cloning only has a 20% success rate, according to experts in Columbia University’s Bioethics Program. These experts and many other critics point out that this low success rate means that even cloning one dog can involve multiple female dogs and multiple surgeries to collect unfertilized eggs and then the same to implant cloned embryos. Surgery comes with risks, and these procedures aren’t medically necessary for the lab participants’ health, say experts. Furthermore, these surrogate dogs are given ongoing hormone treatment to boost fetal growth.

• A Call For Oversight

  • In the ASPCA’s position on pet cloning, this animal welfare organization raises another important issue. Pet cloning is largely unregulated, and since it’s privately funded, the research and practices haven’t undergone public scrutiny. The ASPCA calls for a scientific and ethical analysis of the research, current processes, and public sale of cloned pets.

• Why Not Adopt?

  • Animal advocates raise a rather obvious question. What about all the shelter and rescue pets that need homes? Some find it morally reprehensible to spend tens of thousands of dollars to clone one dog or cat when millions of pets are stuck in shelters, many of which face euthanasia. This, of course, gets to the “adopt, don’t shop” stance that many animal rights activists hold.

Does this end the circle of life as we know it? What do you think?

Sailor and His Dog Rescued after 3 Months at Sea!

“Wilsonnnnnnnn!” Welcome to the real life Cast Away.

51-year-old Tim Shaddock and his dog Bella survived months lost at sea after their boat was damaged by a storm, the BBC reported on Monday.

Shaddock, from Sydney, Australia, was traveling from Mexico to French Polynesia, a 3728 mile journey, when the storm hit. The electronic devices aboard his boat were destroyed by the weather, causing Shaddock and Bella to drift through the North Pacific Ocean without the ability to call for help.

After three months of floating without aid, and surviving only on raw fish and rainwater, his boat was discovered off Mexico’s coast.

Tonight, we drink to Bella.

Overheard at the bar:

“The Squeeze”: Dog News In 60 Seconds

• 🤏 The world’s smallest dog has been announced! We wanted to write this line in 4 point font, but straining your eyes seemed criminal.

• 💘 Over the dating scene? Here’s proof that true love does exist.

• 🐕 The top 10 naughtiest dog breeds have been ranked… and no, sickos, naughty as in mischievous 🙄

• 🏃 A board in Massachusetts voted against putting up a statue of Spencer, the Boston Marathon dog, and all we want is an address to bring our torches and pitchforks to…

• 🚤 A dog rode a jet ski from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati for charity. If your first guess was @brodiethatdood, you’re (sadly) incorrect.

• ❌ The trainers have spoken! This is the one word they don’t want you to use when training your dog.

• 💰 Gen Z is buying cats and dogs instead of weddings and houses. In this economy? Can you blame them?

• 🐻 Want an AirBnB with a butler? This blind and deaf dog meets you at your door each morning to take you to the beach. What a nice lad!

Today’s Last Laugh:

Me whenever the lights come on at the bar…

@patrick.ryan22

This pup didnt want his day at the brewery to end #goldenretriever #harpoonbrewery #vermont #fyp