If your doggy dies, just clone it?

Pet Cemetery was a pretty bad situation... but it wasn't cloning, remember? You take someone dead, bury them in this old native cemetery, and they come back to life... I think it was more of a zombie thing than a cloning thing.

On the other hand, there's "The 6th Day" (The 6th Day (2000)) Where Arnold gets cloned, along with his dog. As you can clearly see in the movie, the guy controlling the cloning is pretty evil, but the clones themselves are pretty much exact copies of the original person. The Arnold clone is a good guy, the dog clone acts exactly like the original.

that being said, i wouldn't mind cloning my dog when he eventually gets old (he's only 3 right now)... but i'm certainly not paying $150k for it

 

you'll never recreate the same personality. isn't that what you're looking for when you lose a pet? to have that old friend back? this is just a new friend who looks like and has the same dna as the old friend.

who you are is far more than your dna...

 

As much as I loved my dog Penny, I think its a better idea to adopt a dog from a shelter than to clone a new pet.

You can find any kind of dog (or cat) you want: http://www.petfinder.com/
and possibly save a life at the same time.

 

I agree, it is the personality that you are likely looking for, and cloning won't give you that. Heck, you aren't even guaranteed the animal being an exact copy of the one cloned. You may start off with the same genetic material, but there will be changes (random) that you nor the process can control.

We had to put our dog of 14.5 years down lst week. I miss him terribly, best dog in the world (evil evil puppy.....incredible dog). In my grief, I contemplated how to go about having him cloned, but in the end, I realized it would do no good, as it was his personality that I really missed (and still do miss) and cloning won't help with that. Maybe a brain transplant would do it, but for now, that is science fiction.

 

As has been said, you can't clone a personality.

Right now they're not looking at cloning cows to eat either, so that law they just passed is pretty useless. What they're looking at is cloning prize winners for the purpose of breeding. You don't eat them. But their offspring provide either more breeding stock or a lot of milk or something like that. $1,000 for a cow the regular way as opposed to a $10,000 cloned cow? You don't eat a $10,000 cow.

This is not to say some grief stricken multi-millionaire will not try to clone Rex or Spot in the hopes that they'll be just like their late pet. I'd say this is inevitably going to happen. It will provide some interesting research papers on DNA, nature and nurture. It will also force the AKC into revising some rules.

 

Pets are great and they are usually our children's first introduction to the fact that things we love can die. I don't want my kids to think that things don't die if you have enough money. Besides, we should give something already alive a good home rather than create something new.

 

Its almost criminal that the lady wants to clone her pit bull terrier. When I went to our county animal shelter looking at the dogs, a large percentage of the dogs were pit bull mixes. Most of these dogs never get adopted.

I know that these dogs are not an "exact" replica of her dog, but they are already here and need a home or they will be put to death to make room for the next group.

They should only allow cloning once there are no longer any dogs available at the shelters.

 

I'm not the morality police, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. I think this would apply to pets and humans.

 

Watch Multiplicity to see the pitfalls of cloning.

 

You can not clone the life experience of the dog you lost.
Get over it and get on with it. Yes I still feel the loss of my dog who died June last year but life goes on. I still have another dog but she is old too then a little dog break and a different dog, maybe.

 

I still miss my dog that has now been gone over two years. We took a break for a few months, but I wanted another dog so I found one at the local SPCA. I purposely looked for a dog that was different from our Min Pin that we lost. I ended up with a Kelpie which are so rare here in the US that few people know what they look like, but I understand are very common in Australia and New Zealand. We named her Dingo. (Its a joke.)

A couple of months later, my GF decided that she wanted a lap dog. Dingo isn't much of a lap dog. She found a Chihuahua through www.petfinder.com that was at a local foster group. We had an appointment to see the dog, but for some reason, the lady with the dog was unable to make it. My GF spotted another dog that was also ready for adoption. A goofy looking little Min Pin. And so now we have another Min Pin. In some respects, he is like the reincarnation of our Penny, in others completely different. I have told my GF several times that she was very lucky the lady with the Chihuahua didn't show up because she might have ended up with the wrong dog.

So the Kelpie is supposed to be my dog, and the Min Pin (Digby) is supposed to be my GF's dog. But they don't know that. Digby thinks that I'm one of his possessions and Dingo loves my GF enough that she sometimes jumps into her lap.

 

Maybe we could clone more owners who want to rescue animals...

 

When we lost our first cat, Chelsea (a rescue kitty), it was over a year before we could go to a shelter and rescue another cat...

Now, Merri is totally a member of the family. Different kind of kitty experience, but just as valuable, just as loved, just as important.

It's good for people (kids) to understand that loss is a part of life, grief is nothing to be ashamed of, and that love comes in many different packages.

 

WORD

 

I think we should just start cloning all the endangered species!

 

They're already trying to make a T-Rex, took us a million years to kill those guys once... and they want to bring them back.

 

My next dog, a while after Missy goes will most likely be a retired greyhound. There is a program here where people retrain them as pets and they are so loving. They will do what ever you do, run all day or lay about all day like me.

I need to be careful not to look for a dog that looks like my old dog, Henry, he was a brindle whippet bull terrier cross, just like a mini greyhound on steroids.

 

one of the problems with endangered species is that they don't have much genetic variability. one genetic susceptibility to an infection of some sort and the whole population can get wiped right out by that.