You’ll never have to say goodbye to another pet again — if you’ve got enough dough to clone it. More and more people are cloning their pets through the same science that produced Dolly the sheep back in 1996. Since Dolly made history as the world’s first cloned mammal, several other species have been cloned, including horses, cats, and deer. Most recently, a cloned Arctic wolf was even born to a beagle in China.

A clone of your dog will set you back around USD 50k: A team of scientists in South Korea set out to clone a dog for the first time in 2002. Three years and more than 1k attempts later, Afghan hound Snuppy (Seoul National University puppy) was born to a yellow Labrador retriever surrogate mother. A couple of companies specializing in cloning pets have since emerged, such as ViaGen Pets in Texas, which charges USD 50k for dog cloning and USD 35k for cat cloning, according to their website.

Why do people do it? Often, cloning is an attempt to soften the grief that comes from losing a pet. The market isn’t restricted to the silly-rich — some people who can’t easily afford the cost of the procedure are saving up and selling their assets in order to pay for the process. One man sold a prized Andy Warhol he had bought years prior and another sold his pickup truck to help pay to clone their dogs.

Not the same pup: The clones are not replicas of old pets. They are more like an “identical twin — just born at a different time,” Melain Rodriguez, ViaGen’s client service manager, told the Washington Post.

Barbra Streisand was an early adopter: Streisand made two genetic replicas of her coton de tulear Samantha, who has since passed away, she told Variety. “They have different personalities,” Streisand says of the clone pair. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her (Samantha’s) brown eyes and seriousness.”

How it works: It’s easiest to clone a pet that’s still alive, using a tissue sample, according to Business Insider. Scientists then isolate the cells they need from the sample, put them in a growth medium, and a couple weeks later they have the cells they need to proceed. To create embryos, another dog has to “donate” an egg, which is “enucleated” (the nucleus is removed) to be replaced with the cloned dog’s DNA. The embryos are then implanted into another dog which serves as a surrogate mother — who does not have to be the same breed as the clone — and carries the litter of cloned puppies to term, according to the New York Times.

Some people get their pet’s DNA harvested and kept on ice so they can clone their beloved in the event of their death. Cells can be stored for several years before they’re cloned. “So you’ve got a puppy now that was from a dog that was alive 25 years ago,” Rodriguez told the Washington Post.

Prominent animal advocacy organizations have spoken out against animal cloning. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) argued that it subjects the animals used in the process to invasive procedures, according to a statement. The organization also says cloning is unnecessary given the current pet overpopulation problem, which results in mns of dogs being kept in shelters, many of whom face early death by euthanasia. HSUS also argues that the practice reinforces the notion that animals are manufactured commodities. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) points to the fact that the cloning process does not have a 100 percent success rate and not all embryos will be viable — meaning some animals are subjected to the process only for it to fail and have to be repeated again. Several surrogate and egg donor animals could be used to create one pet for a paying customer.

There are also thorny issues when it comes to selecting our preferred animal characteristics: Awardwinning show dogs or champion racehorses could be cloned for competition purposes, raising questions of fairness and how cloning differs ethically from breeding.

** HOW DO YOU FEEL about the prospect of cloning your pets? Do you think it’s creepy? Would you want to clone your puppy? Drop us a line with your thoughts at editorial@enterprise.press.