A couple from the UK have cloned their dead dog, a boxer named Dylan, to create two puppies which will be born over Christmas.
Richard Remde and his partner Laura Jacques lost their beloved eight-year-old best friend in June to a heart attack, after Dylan was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.
“I had had Dylan since he was a puppy,” Ms Jacques told The Guardian.
“I mothered him so much, he was my baby, my child, my entire world.”
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Desperate to be reunited in some capacity with Dylan, the couple went to South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, paying more than $A137,648 to genetically engineer a replica.
The procedure began 12 days after Dylan died, with scientists warning it had never been successful for dogs who had been dead for more than five days.
However, scientists’ fears were quashed, with two puppy embryos produced. The boxer pups are slated to be born to a surrogate on – fittingly - Boxing Day.
They will likely resemble Dylan and share similar personality traits.
Ms Remde and Ms Jacque have become the first people in Britain to clone their dog, with no regulations currently in place for the cloning of pets – only humans.
The first animal ever cloned was Dolly the sheep in 1996. Dogs have been cloned in South Korea since 2005.
