Last year, Richard Remde and Laura Jacques, a British couple that had lost their pet dog to an inoperable brain tumor decided to get him cloned.
Richard told ITV’s Real Stories With Ranvir Singh: “Well, as you know, some people go out and buy their fancy sports cars or, you know, go on fancy holidays. We don’t do that and we decided to spend that money on these dogs.”
Laura explained her thought process. “I started thinking ‘what am I going to do?’ and I looked into getting him stuffed, which sounds awful but I didn’t want to part with him.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of never being able to see him again and I searched dog cloning and I sent Richard a message saying: ‘We can get him stuffed for two grand or cloned for sixty grand’.”‘
They almost immediately decided to go for it.
The process involved taking a bit of cells from the deceased 8-year-old Boxer, Dylan, and sending them to South Korea. From here, DNA was extracted from the cells and put into a blank egg, where electric stimulation caused it to divide. Once activated, the newly growing egg cell was implanted in a surrogate dog-mother.
Now, earlier this year, the surrogate gave birth to Dylan’s “puppies,” or, rather, his clones. Two young boxers, named Chance and Shadow. Both dogs are healthy and Richard and Laura say it was worth the money.
*Article originally appeared at Minds.
