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Article Written by Bakers Acres Founder: Sara Baker, owner of Bakers Acres K9 Academy
The pet world is all ablaze with the news that Barbara Streisand recently cloned her beloved Coton de tulear who passed away. (Read more about that here). While this might sound like every pet owner's dream come true, it is not at all healthy for the dog...maybe even for the owner because there might now be an unhealthy attachment to a dog that is similar in some respects, but vastly different in others.
Cloning will most likely lead to a smaller and more unhealthy gene pool. Plus there is no guarantee that this "new dog" will be the same as the "old dog." Yes, they might look the same, but temperaments and personalities can be completely different. While genetics does play a large part in how a puppy acts, you have to take nurturing and environment into account. A cloned puppy would probably be treated as a surrogate for the grieving pet parent. And thus would be subjected to very vulnerable and unstable human emotions at a very young age. Too young to understand human emotions and too immature to make wise decisions in a strange world.
We have seen it a LOT with owners who bypass the grieving period and get a new puppy right away. The owner unknowingly place a lot of emotional baggage on the new puppy and the new puppy, overwhelmed with the inability to understand human emotion, acts out in the only way it knows how, attack or flee. Another scenario is when new puppy owners who get a puppy thinking they can serve as their Service Dog or Emotional Support Dog without a temperament test or any previous training and they try to train it themselves when the puppy is not SD or ESA material. Hence the reason why so many puppies and dogs have major behavioral issues at such a young age.
When a beloved pet dies, do the healthy and humane thing...let your pet pass away in peace and let your heart heal from the loss. Then, when the time is right and you are ready, get a new dog that is the perfect temperament and energy level for you.