Laura Jacques and Richard Remde received news of second dog’s birth on Monday morning after paying £67,000 to South Korean cloning firm

A British couple have been celebrating after a second cloned puppy was born using DNA from their beloved pet dog who died earlier this year.

Richard Remde and Laura Jacques from West Yorkshire paid £67,000 to have their boxer dog, Dylan, who died of a brain tumour in June, cloned.

They provided tissue samples containing Dylan’s DNA in July, and were thrilled when they received the news last month that two pregnancies had been established in surrogate dogs.

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The couple have named the second dog Shadow, after a character in Jacques’ favourite movie, Disney’s Homeward Bound. Chance, named after another character in the film, was born on Boxing Day by caesarean section but Shadow was born naturally early on Monday after the dog carrying him went into labour a day earlier than expected.

Both puppies are healthy and are bonding with their mothers who are feeding and caring for them. Both puppies bear markings that are identical to those Dylan had. Chance has been given the tag 746 and Shadow the tag 747 so everyone is clear which puppy is which.

Remde and Jacques said they were overjoyed to be the proud owners of two healthy cloned puppies. A Twitter account called WeLovedDylan has been created to document the puppies’ progress.

The boxer puppies have made scientific history – they were cloned from the couple’s dead dog almost two weeks after it died. The previous limit for dog cloning was five days after death.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The two cloned puppies are said to bear the same markings as Dylan, who died in June. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Jacques, 29, and Remde 43, were grief-stricken after their boxer died at the age of eight. The pair decided to try cloning Dylan and enlisted the services of the controversial Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, which offers a commercial dog-cloning service for $100,000 (£67,000) per procedure. It is the only laboratory of its kind in the world. The couple have hailed the births as “a miracle”.

Jacques said she and Remde were overwhelmed after witnessing the first birth by caesarean section on Saturday in the operating theatre at Sooam.

“The whole thing just feels surreal,” she said. “I lost all sense of time. I have no idea how long everything took, the whole thing made me feel very disoriented. I was just clinging on to Richard for about an hour and a half after Chance was born.

“After they got him out I still couldn’t quite believe it had happened. But once he started making noises I knew it was real. Even as a puppy of just a few minutes old I can’t believe how much he looks like Dylan. All the colourings and patterns on his body are in exactly the same places as Dylan had them.

“I had had Dylan since he was a puppy,” she said. “I mothered him so much, he was my baby, my child, my entire world.”

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The couple hope to bring both puppies home next July when their quarantine period has ended. They also hope to bring the two surrogate mother dogs back to the UK too and want to adopt them.

Sooam, the leading laboratory in the world for dog cloning, has produced more than 700 dogs for commercial customers. The technique involves implanting DNA into a blank dog egg with the nucleus removed.

Jacques heard about dog cloning from a documentary about a competition Sooam ran for one UK dog owner to have their dog cloned free of charge. Rebecca Smith was the winner and her dachshund, Winnie, who is still alive, was successfully cloned. David Kim, a scientist at Sooam, said the birth of the two cloned dogs was exciting for the laboratory because samples were taken from Dylan 12 days after he died. “This is the first case we have had where cells have been taken from a dead dog after a very long time,” he said. “Hopefully it will allow us to extend the time after death that we can take cells for cloning.”

There are no regulations on the cloning of pets, although the cloning of human beings is illegal, and in August the European parliament voted to outlaw the cloning of farm animals.

The RSPCA expressed concern about dog cloning. A spokesperson said: “There are serious ethical and welfare concerns relating to the application of cloning technology to animals. Cloning animals requires procedures that cause pain and distress, with extremely high failure and mortality rates. There is also a body of evidence that cloned animals frequently suffer physical ailments such as tumours, pneumonia and abnormal growth patterns.”