You are at level one of crazy dog parent when you throw your pooch a birthday or bark mitzvah. You are at level two when your dog has more clothes than you do. And you are at level 100 when you store your dog’s skin samples and spend $50,000 (£39,000) to clone it.
David and Alicia Tschirhart are level 100 pet parents. The Californian couple made headlines recently for cloning Marley, their pet Labrador. Marley was an extremely good boy; he once fought off a rattlesnake, possibly saving a pregnant Alicia’s life. When Marley died from cancer, his owners had a hard time letting him go, so they didn’t: they used a pet cloning company to create a genetically identical puppy called Ziggy. “They have the same personality, they play the same, they favour the same toys,” Alicia told reporters.
I didn’t grow up with pets, apart from a short-lived stick insect (regular readers may remember poor Fatima). So there was a time when I would have thought anyone who cloned a dog was barking mad. I would probably have been holier than thou about how irresponsible it was to spend a fortune genetically reproducing an animal. I would have wrung my hands over celebrities such as Barbra Streisand, who cloned her dog Samantha and then had the facsimiles pose at the grave of their “mother”.
That was in the years BC (before canine). Now that I have a dog, I understand completely. If money were no object I would 100% clone Rascal, my tiny rescue mutt. Rascal has never saved me from a rattlesnake and, to be honest, I doubt he would. He would probably just sniff the snake while it killed me. But he has saved me in other ways and I would do anything to extend my time with him. It would be a doggone shame not to.
•Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
