Oh my dog! Dog cloning is now a reality…

We should have called this site “CAN YOU TOP THIS” as every day brings over-the-top news about people and their pets. Today topped all in our estimation.

The term designer dogs has taken on a new meaning as has the term “one-in-a-million” pet. A company called Bioarts International has successfully cloned a dog, after spending $20,000,000 that is. Three dogs have been produced to replace the CEO’s family dog Missy who died in 2002. The cloning idea came to mind in 1997 when Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland.

Guests of Good Morning America today, the three cloned dogs, Mira, Sarong and Chingo, are your actual one-in-a-million, truly. Well, more like a one-in-a-gazillion dogs. They are 90 percent replicas of Missy. When the CEO, Lou Hawthorne, was asked why he didn’t just breed Missy, he said that she had been spayed. Well how about adopting a dog from a shelter?

Hawthorne just wanted to have his own dog, forever and ever, so headed down the cloning path. Amazing! I know some dearly loved people I would like to and would have liked to clone and hence the ethical fear in all of this… that cloning people cannot be far behind. Engineering life…

It is really easy to understand why people would want to clone their special pets. Losing a best friend is always painful. But with the numbers of other wonderful pets hoping upon hope for adoption, instead of death, it is amazing that someone would actually spend twenty million dollars to clone a dog.

When asked about the impact to shelter pet adoptions, Hawthorne just shrugged and came off as petulant and above-the-crowd in his response, quickly dismissing the suggestion that cloning will impact pet shelter adoptions. A marketing-magic moment… appeal to the emotions and the being exclusive.He more or less inferred, with a condescending sniff, that the masses could and would continue to adopt shelter dogs, while those in the rare air who could possibly afford it would no doubt opt to have a cloned pet. Wow!

In an age when there is a move to what Eckart Tolle describes as a new earth… a unity and deeper community with others, this step is a giant step to separate, to be above the rest. No doubt there will be some takers. We’re guessing the company is banking on this as it is holding an auction on June 18 for five cloned dogs. It will be interesting to see what prices they get… got to find some way to make up that 2M investment. For details about this auction you can check in at best friends again.

For the rest of us mere mortals there are still the many millions of fantastic doggies in the window just waiting for someone to adopt them into a caring home and a chance to become a new and loyal best friend.