Booger: Another Cloned Hero

Bernann McKinney's dog, Booger, saved her life when she was brutally attacked by another dog. Even though the dog was three times his size, Booger managed to scare him off. Both McKinney and Booger sustained injuries, hers more serious than the dog's. When Booger was fully recovered, he went to work helping McKinney recover. Although he was not trained as a service dog, he learned to help her remove shoes and clothing, pull her wheelchair, fetch things for her, and open doors for her. Booger is a wonderful example of why it can be a good idea to clone a pet. It takes a special dog to step up and be more than a companion in trying times, and Booger was just the dog to do so. It would be difficult to find a better argument for having a pet cloned.

When Booger died in 2006, McKinney reached out to the Korean biotechnology firm RNL Bio with a request to have her pet cloned. The firm succeeded last year, producing five descendants of Booger, created through the cloning process. McKinney has decided to keep three of the dogs as her own and donate two of them as service dogs to work with people who have special needs.

Deciding whether it is right to clone your pet is a major decision. In McKinney's case, it was an easy one. Starting the cloning process was a bit more complicated – McKinney had legal difficulties getting Booger's genetic material to the cloning company and had to sell her house to pay for the procedure. However, as McKinney concluded, using the cloning process to make dogs like Booger is, without a doubt, helpful to her and to other humans. Booger's triumphant story of overcoming his owner's attacker and then helping her through a long recovery process is proof that our society should support the cloning process and related technology.