Swank Pets Dog Blog

Sometimes, Teresa and I talk about wishing that our dogs could live forever. We think how nice it would be if someone could think of some sort of invention or miracle drug that would make our dogs live indefinitely. Well, maybe not indefinitely, but the average life span of most dogs is about 12 -15 years and increasing that to maybe 100 years would be nice. It scares us to even think about our dogs not being with us. Now, there might be a solution, which a company based out of Seoul Korea has come up with.

The Korean biotech company, RNL Bio, has claimed that they can successfully clone a dog. Although the current success rate is only 25%, they mention that further research should prove a successful clone every time. All they require is a very good DNA sample from your dog, and a whopping $150,000. That’s right, cloning doesn’t come cheap these days, but supposedly there are hundreds of people lining up to get their dogs cloned.

One woman, Bernann McKunney out of California, is one of their first clients. She wants them to clone her pit bull that has been dead for the past year and a half. So how was she able to provide a DNA sample you may ask? Well, Bernann preserved her dog at a local Biotech company here in the United States. This allowed her to provide a frozen tissue sample of her pit bull’s ear. This is one owner that definitely can’t let go of her dog.

So far in clinical trials, the Korean company has been successful in cloning an Afghan hound and even a wolf. The company also hopes to use this dog cloning process to produce more task oriented dogs, such as bomb or drug sniffing dogs.

The company states the genes and DNA of your dog will be completely replicated, however their behavior may not be the same. They mention that a dog’s behavior is not completely determined by their genes. Outside factors such as a dog’s environment can help mold a dog’s personality. So all in all, you will get a dog that is genetically identical, but not 100% identical in every aspect.

I suppose this would kind of solve my problem, but then again, I just don’t feel that a cloned version of my dogs would be the same as the original. Maybe, just maybe, if everything including the personality was EXACTLY the same as my old dogs, I might be really excited about this service. Well that, and maybe a lower price tag. Either way, I think I’ll cross my fingers and pray that Pfizer or Merck come out with a wonder pill that will simply extend my dogs’ life another 80 years. Think I’m crazy? Maybe I am, but who would have thought that everyone in the world could be reading this article at the same time through an invention we call the computer and the internet.