Conscious Choice: Dog of my Dog

April 2002

Dog of my Dog

Pet cloning is a hollow attempt to reclaim lost youth

by Cecil Bothwell

Clones are with us again, as one supposes clones will be with us forever — bioengineering being a genie nearly impossible to stuff back into its magic beaker. The newest variation on this theme is a calico kitten in Texas.

Expediency seems to be the mother of invention these days, and researchers involved in this project make no bones about it. According to the Washington Post, "Scientists said the ability to clone cats... could satisfy... a growing consumer demand for pet cloning services." In other words, there is money in it.

I know commentators all the way back to Jesus — and doubtless before — have observed that the poor will always be with us, but stories like this one certainly raise awareness of modern disparity to new heights. While Afghan peasants subsisted on dry grass this winter, slowing by just a little their terminal starvation following years of drought and interminable warfare, an American magnate named Sperling spent $3.7 million attempting to recreate his favorite dog.

Of course, it would require the dilettantism of humongous wealth for a person to imagine that a companion animal could be recreated. I picture Sperling instructing his staff to prepare the dog for an afternoon walk on one of those afternoons when Sperling is in town and his secretary has penciled "dog walk" on his itinerary. Surely no one who actually participated in rearing, nurture, and daily intimacy with a cat or dog (or a child for that matter), could fantasize that Boopsey the Second will turn out like Boopsey the First.

Imagine, for example, a young woman who adopts a Labrador puppy during college. Tina and Burton are inseparable, whether it’s Frisbee in the park, cramming for exams, spring break in Daytona, or moping through the breakup of a youthful romance. They hitchhike to Alaska the summer after graduation, share an apartment in Seattle, and settle into married life in Roanoke where the ever loyal but aging Burton valiantly suffers indignity and abuse at the ungentle hands of small children. Through it all Burton is first and foremost Tina’s dog. Even when his incontinence and yowls of arthritic pain become too much for her to bear, and she asks a veterinarian to end his suffering, his rheumy eyes will be fixed on her as he collapses on the stainless steel table and expires.

There is nothing for it but to procure a clone. Burton of Burton will be much the same sort of puppy as his solitary forebear. Cuteness will garner lots of attention at first, and from all directions. The children, now six and eight, are old enough to learn a bit about responsibility, and will be cajoled or coerced into attending to Burt’s needs. Like other chores this will be endured with a measure of resentment, which cannot help but be conveyed to the dog. Tina and her husband are busy with their jobs and the kids have school, so Burt is left to his own devices, chews up shoes and pillows, and is punished — gently of course, because these people do love animals. He ends up penned in the yard most of the time, and sleeps on a rug on the porch except in the coldest weather. Burt may be included in family vacations, but just as likely, may be boarded in a kennel while the folks fly off to Disney World. After the divorce, with the kids in college, it will be Tina and Burton again — she will get custody since Burt is, after all, dog of her dog — but any similarity between the first and second canine will be no more than that between any other two Labrador retrievers. And while Tina will doubtless feel affection, it cannot help but be tinged by all of her own experiences in the years between.

Here we get to the heart of the matter, I think. Those who would clone a favorite pet are not so much grasping for recreation of the now departed and greatly hallowed Boopsey as they are clutching after their own immortality and retreating youth. I would be shocked and amazed if those who fund the cloning of mammals don’t have every intention of including hominids in their plan.

Ah, what joy! The cloned master and the cloned pet recycled in perpetuity, lives locked in amber, forever young. Talk about sick puppies!

Cecil Bothwell is author of The Icarus Glitch: Another Duck Soup Reader, and editor of the Warren Wilson College environmental journal, Heartstone.

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