# Thoughts on Cloning???



## Thecowboysgirl (Nov 30, 2006)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pet-cloning-mans-best-friend-025100331.html



This may have been discussed on here before. But this just popped up in my news feed. I guess I can see the allure but it gives me the heebie jeebies.

Dying to know what you guys think?


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## cagal (Sep 3, 2013)

I don’t think it’s for me. I love my dogs but I also love that each one is different. I also think you’d be bound for disappointment- the dog may look the same and have genetic traits but nurture plays a huge role. Nothing would be worse IMO to have a dog looking like a beloved pet then being so different it ruins the memory.


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## Bearshandler (Aug 29, 2019)

The 50k price tag kills any chance I do it. Even not being cost prohibitive, I don’t know if I would.


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## ksotto333 (Aug 3, 2011)

No, not for me. As most know we lost our Tess in April, but I have her full baby sister still. Couldn't have 2 dogs more different. Their soul, as for everyone is unique, utterly precious and irreplaceable. Cherish memories.


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## dogma13 (Mar 8, 2014)

Nope. Heebie Jeebies here too.


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## Buckelke (Sep 4, 2019)

right up there with designer dogs. creepy.


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## Lexie’s mom (Oct 27, 2019)

Sounds weird and expensive. I would like to hear/read stories from people who has actually done it and lived with a cloned pet for a few years. Also I don’t know how exactly this “surrogate animal”stuff works?


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## Muskeg (Jun 15, 2012)

A friend shared a story where Russia cloned some working malinois but they didn't turn out well?

I have a mother-daughter here and they are very, very different. Variety is the spice of life- you'll never have the same dog again, or be in the same place in life again. Such is life. You can't go back.


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## Buckelke (Sep 4, 2019)

If I wanted to keep a Jake forever, I would never have had a sweet boy like Lucky or Duke, the Clown.


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## Sabis mom (Mar 20, 2014)

Nope. Just like people, life experience makes the dog who it is. It would be heartbreaking to have a dog that looked and sounded and smelled like Sabi, but acted different.


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## Thecowboysgirl (Nov 30, 2006)

Lexie’s mom said:


> Sounds weird and expensive. I would like to hear/read stories from people who has actually done it and lived with a cloned pet for a few years. Also I don’t know how exactly this “surrogate animal”stuff works?


I wondered about that surrogate thing too


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## Thecowboysgirl (Nov 30, 2006)

I'm gonna have to assume they keep a population of "laboratory" dogs there for the purpose of having the embryos implanted in them. 

So then I wonder...in dogs, would this always result in a singleton puppy birth, never a litter? That right there would make a puppy turn out different.

And from an ethics standpoint, if I am right about the lab dogs....that's a problem for me. That's basically sacrificing one animal's life and well being in order to produce another. Not okay with me


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## Lexie’s mom (Oct 27, 2019)

Thecowboysgirl said:


> I'm gonna have to assume they keep a population of "laboratory" dogs there for the purpose of having the embryos implanted in them.
> 
> So then I wonder...in dogs, would this always result in a singleton puppy birth, never a litter? That right there would make a puppy turn out different.
> 
> And from an ethics standpoint, if I am right about the lab dogs....that's a problem for me. That's basically sacrificing one animal's life and well being in order to produce another. Not okay with me


That’s what I was thinking too.


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## wolfy dog (Aug 1, 2012)

For me personally, it would be to dishonor the death of the departed dog. She will belong in Heaven and no part of her DNA would stay here. For me it is exciting to explore a totally new dog/pup.


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## Muskeg (Jun 15, 2012)

There's lots of studies showing that the mother (dam) matters more than 50% in determining puppy temperament. How she reacts to her puppies, how she plays, how she interacts with her people- that all matters, too. So if the cloned pup was raised in a sterile lab, with no exposure to a typical household, limited stimulus, and a Mom who is probably stressed, it won't even be close to the same from week 8. 

Also, epigenetics are fascinating, and that plays a role too.

I've discovered it's not fair to the dog to expect him/her to act a certain way because of how she looks or her genes or pedigree. Each dog is an individual, meet them where they are and love them for who they are. Just like humans- each dog is different.


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## Whiteshepherds (Aug 21, 2010)

Muskeg said:


> There's lots of studies showing that the mother (dam) matters more than 50% in determining puppy temperament. How she reacts to her puppies, how she plays, how she interacts with her people- that all matters, too. So if the cloned pup was raised in a sterile lab, with no exposure to a typical household, limited stimulus, and a Mom who is probably stressed, it won't even be close to the same from week 8.


^^^That^^^ 1000 times. 
As much as I appreciate the idea of cloning I don't think it's possible to reproduce the interactions a puppy had with it's dam, littermates, the breeder and the breeders family those first 8 weeks.


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## Lexie’s mom (Oct 27, 2019)

I’ve had a mother/daughter combination for 11+ years. Both were awesome dogs with great personalities, similar looking, very attached to each other.


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

I know we aren't supposed to anthropomorphize animals, but we consider them family. Would you clone a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child? Ew. Dogs are different because we cannot think in canine. But thinking in human, what would a cloned person think of us? Ok, dogs aren't going to think of that. But it is still beyond yuck. It is like sacrilegious. We have one chance with a critter. We don't get to do it over again. I love my critters, but I wouldn't bring them back from the dead or try to duplicate them.


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## Sunflowers (Feb 17, 2012)

Creepy.

I fell in love with Rolf’s aunt, Lana, and my dream came true when the breeder used her male sibling to sire a litter.

I got my “clone.” 
Close relative.
Good enough for me.


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## middleofnowhere (Dec 20, 2000)

I've said that I'd love to have another one just like my current eldest - because her biddability, temperament, drive are so outstanding. I'd take the flaws, maybe even the flaws x 2, to get the positives. But cloning doesn't necessarily work that way. I could imagine ending up with the flaws and maybe the flaws x 2 and not get the side of the package that I would really be after. So, no.


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## middleofnowhere (Dec 20, 2000)

As for cloning my family--- well, I like my siblings but my parents should not have ever been allowed on the earth. SO sure, clone some family members and not others...


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## Dunkirk (May 7, 2015)

selzer said:


> I know we aren't supposed to anthropomorphize animals, but we consider them family. Would you clone a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child? Ew. Dogs are different because we cannot think in canine. But thinking in human, what would a cloned person think of us? Ok, dogs aren't going to think of that. But it is still beyond yuck. It is like sacrilegious. We have one chance with a critter. We don't get to do it over again. I love my critters, but I wouldn't bring them back from the dead or try to duplicate them.


A few of my siblings, I definitely wouldn't clone.


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## Lexie’s mom (Oct 27, 2019)

I wonder if in theory it might improve the chances to have not just an identically looking dog but a dog with a very similar personality if you do it when your current dog is still young and it can influence the upbringing of its clone?


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

Lexie’s mom said:


> I wonder if in theory it might improve the chances to have not just an identically looking dog but a dog with a very similar personality if you do it when your current dog is still young and it can influence the upbringing of its clone?


No. I wouldn't. 50k is too much money to try to play God with. If we want to play God, we should take that 50K and adopt a child that would otherwise have an awful life, or fund a soup kitchen, or fund a scholarship for victims of crime, or clean up a neighborhood, or set up apartments for a year for several homeless servicemen, or fund a campaign against or to improve the lives of animals kept in laboratories, or to help 10 families displaced by hurricanes or forest fires. I don't think there should be a cap on what amount of money people should earn, but there is something about gluttony, which in my opinion is to take resources and to consume them so wastefully without regard to the needs of people around us. 

Someone can purchase a dog for 50k, and if they were doing it to establish a line of dogs, buying a champion or a specially trained dog for police work or seeing eye, or siezure/heart/glucose monitoring -- that I wouldn't have an issue with. Spending that kind of money to assure your next dog is the same in looks and hopefully in temperament of a previous dog, it's obscene to me. But then my house only cost 29k, and I still have a couple of years to pay on it, so 50k is a lot of money to me. If the cost was 5k, then I wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't be as set against it for other people.


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## cagal (Sep 3, 2013)

Lexie’s mom said:


> I wonder if in theory it might improve the chances to have not just an identically looking dog but a dog with a very similar personality if you do it when your current dog is still young and it can influence the upbringing of its clone?


Wouldn’t the addition of a second dog potentially change what both may end up like? Also if the first is still young, you’d possibly never really know what the first was like in the fullness of its life? This is an interesting question you raise. This is why I have an uneasiness about cloning in general unless it’s say specific anatomical parts such as muscle tissue or organs that are essentially inanimate. The spectrum for experimentation increases exponentially once you clone whole living organisms. While I’m absolutely behind science, I feel cloning animals opens the door to attempts to clone humans once the technique is perfected and I’m absolutely against that ethically. Really the only purpose I can see in animal cloning might be to save endangered species but even then you’re using a limited gene pool and potentially perpetuating genetic flaws. Or you have to start fiddling with genetic sequencing, which raises other issues. Would you clone your dog but have hip dysplasia corrected through genetic manipulation if it were possible? This has been an extremely interesting and thought provoking thread.


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## Jenny720 (Nov 21, 2014)

The concept is more wild and fun to flirt. I don’t see it so painful to me as knowing our physical form -our dna always goes back to the earth in the end. Our souls leave this place, although will visit, but can never be duplicated. Clones are not identical. 

My nephews are identical twins and my cousins are identical twins. Identical twins have the same dna as each other. They are what you would consider natural clones both complete opposite different personalities from each other. My nephews, I still can not tell them barely apart and are 6 years old . My cousins they looked identical when younger. As they aged looked related and not identical. Both very different personalities of each other. A personality or individual can not be duplicated. Anyone who has a identical twin or relative or a friend who is a identical twin knows they are two very different people. I thought it would always be fun to have an identical twin.

Even though pups from a litter only share a part of the dna, it’s most likely one of the reasons dog /animal breeders breed. Loosing the life of a spouse and having a child from that spouse or a sibling etc there is a healthy healing aspect in that rather then an unhealthy healing aspect.


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## Whiteshepherds (Aug 21, 2010)

It would be interesting to know how many dogs used for cloning were good examples of their breed rather than dogs the owners couldn't stand to live without, faults and all.

Thinking about all the dogs I've owned, the one I would clone (if I was rich and of a different mindset) wouldn't be the one that dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's as far as a breed standard was concerned, it would be the one I had the closest connection to...You know, THAT dog...faults and all. Does anyone else feel this way?


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## Sunflowers (Feb 17, 2012)

Sunflowers said:


> Creepy.
> 
> I fell in love with Rolf’s aunt, Lana, and my dream came true when the breeder used her male sibling to sire a litter.
> 
> ...


Here is a pic of them, first meeting.
They both acted as if they knew one another. Pretty astounding. I’m thinking they smelled like their relatives in Germany, to one another.😁


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## dogma13 (Mar 8, 2014)

Sunflowers said:


> Here is a pic of them, first meeting.
> They both acted as if they knew one another. Pretty astounding. I’m thinking they smelled like their relatives in Germany, to one another.😁
> View attachment 578193


That's adorable


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## Lexie’s mom (Oct 27, 2019)

I’ve found this article to be very interesting: Cloning the Best in Show


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## brittanyS (Dec 11, 2018)

I agree with most of what’s been said in the thread already, but I still find the idea of cloning to be pretty interesting. 

The personality of the cloned dog would probably be different from the original dog, but what if you could improve your handling and care of the dog to address faults that the dog might be genetically predispositioned to? Or what if you could change how you socialized the dog?

My old girl has a lot of faults - most of which I am either directly responsible for or made worse because I didn’t know how to handle it. I guess the interesting part of cloning to me isn’t whether the dog would be an identical clone, but how my (hopefully) more knowledgeable handling might have a positive impact on the cloned dog.


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## Whiteshepherds (Aug 21, 2010)

Sunflowers said:


> Pretty astounding. I’m thinking they smelled like their relatives in Germany, to one another.😁


Are you trying to tell us your dogs smell like wiener schnitzel and beer?


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## Sunflowers (Feb 17, 2012)

Whiteshepherds said:


> Are you trying to tell us your dogs smell like wiener schnitzel and beer?


Oh, my... you just brought to mind wonderful memories.
The day we visited the litter (at 7 weeks) was one of the happiest days of my life. Small German town, clean and tranquil, exactly as you think it might look like. Dogs kept in fantastic conditions. A wonderful couple with young kids, who lovingly socialized the pups. Gorgeous, healthy, happy adult dogs and frisky, enthusiastic puppies.


The breeder brought out a basket of male pups.
Rolf, upper right hand corner.❤
We didn’t know he was Rolf, we let the breeder choose.

The only regret I have is not being able to join them in the house for coffee and a chat.
We had a long drive back to our hotel and had to catch an early flight.
That evening, we had traditional German food and fresh, cold beer.


A perfect day.


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## Sunflowers (Feb 17, 2012)

The above brings me to another thought: all that would be missed out on, and everything would take place in a laboratory.
Nope, nope.
This, my friends, is priceless:


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## DougnLuna (Apr 3, 2021)

absolutely agree with Cagal, dog would look the same but the personality will be different. it will retain none of the former dogs' training, habits, even tastes...so why bother?
think of it like identical twins separated at birth, one goes to a foreign family overseas and the other stays here. after 20 years, how different do you think they would be? the clone would be the same way..


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## David Winners (Apr 30, 2012)

Sunflowers said:


> Oh, my... you just brought to mind wonderful memories.
> The day we visited the litter (at 7 weeks) was one of the happiest days of my life. Small German town, clean and tranquil, exactly as you think it might look like. Dogs kept in fantastic conditions. A wonderful couple with young kids, who lovingly socialized the pups. Gorgeous, healthy, happy adult dogs and frisky, enthusiastic puppies.
> 
> 
> ...


Wonderful dog culture in Europe!


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## SulcoPete (Sep 10, 2020)

Thecowboysgirl said:


> https://www.yahoo.com/news/pet-cloning-mans-best-friend-025100331.html
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> ...


I don't see a problem with it. It's like if your dog had a twin. If money wasn't an issue, I might consider it if I really liked a dog's physical traits. But I think it would be unhealthy and weird if you did it for the wrong reasons....like you miss your dog so much you can't let go so you want to resurect it or some weird idea like that. I think that would be unhealthy.


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## tim_s_adams (Aug 9, 2017)

Even without considering the ethical, and horrific, implications of using real live host dogs for these clones, I wouldn't ever consider it if it were free! You can't reproduce a soul!


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## just4mom (May 4, 2021)

Thecowboysgirl said:


> https://www.yahoo.com/news/pet-cloning-mans-best-friend-025100331.html
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> 
> 
> ...


Ugh


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## Aly (May 26, 2011)

I've been following the research on cloning (sheep, dogs, horses) for years. As an intellectual question, I find it utterly fascinating. Would I do that to "replace" one of my dogs? Absolutely not. We only have a broad understanding of what makes each individual different and unique. As it stands now, the best you could hope for is a second individual who _looks _like, but doesn't behave like, the parent --- except for very gross indicators such as differential rates of muscle firing, or rates of oxygenation, for example, which can make for greater speed in race horses. Even then, it doesn't guarantee that the animal will lend itself to training, enjoy racing and be faster. As to temperament, personality, trainability, etc., the factors that shape those characteristics can be highly variable (e.g., time spent with the dam, nature of the dam's pregnancy, etc). No, I wouldn't do it, nor recommend it, but it's _very _interesting to think about.


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