Two and a half years ago, when Dr. Phillip Dupont was turning 70, he didn’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on an elaborate party or a luxury golf vacation. Instead, he cloned his 10-year-old Doberman-Catahoula mix. The beloved dog was beginning to show his age, and Dupont, a veterinarian based in Lafayette, La., couldn’t imagine his senior years without Melvin.

“I don’t have a lot of other hobbies like some of my friends do, but I loved that dog,” he says.

He paid the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in South Korea more than $100,000 to create a copy of Melvin.

“We took a family vote and my son said, ‘At least you are spending your money on something you love.’ ”

It’s expensive and complicated to clone an animal, but the practice is becoming increasingly common. Sooam says it’s produced about 80 dogs for Americans since 2007. And ViaGen, a Texas-based company that previously replicated only horses and livestock, has just jumped into the house-pet-cloning arena to meet the growing demand. The company has produced clones of two cats and started the process with several dogs. It charges significantly less than Sooam — $50,000 for puppies and $25,000 for kittens.



Their color patterns were identical [to Melvin’s], and they have very similar personality traits. - Phillip Dupont

“We decided to step into the companion-animal space because clients kept asking,’’ says ViaGen president Blake Russell. “Over 30 people have already signed contracts, and there is a waiting list.’’

To clone a pet, a tissue sample is taken from the inside of the cheek or the abdomen. It’s converted into a culture with the animal’s DNA, which is then injected into unfertilized eggs taken from a surrogate. Once an embryo develops, it is inserted into the surrogate. Nine weeks later, a cloned litter of one to four animals arrives.

The Duponts took home two clone puppies from Korea in early 2013. Melvin was still alive at that point, and he came face to face with his mini-doppelgängers, named Ken and Harvey, before he passed away around his 12th birthday.

“They acted like long-lost friends, following Melvin around,’’ says Dupont. “Their color patterns were identical [to Melvin’s], and they have very similar personality traits.”

Dupont’s wife, Paula, says the likeness is uncanny.

“Melvin used to come over and rest his head on my lap and look up until I started asking what he wanted. When I came to the right question, he would wiggle around, shake and sneeze,” she says. “The puppies do exactly the same thing, and they have the exact bark.”

It’s not just dog lovers wanting duplicates. Dawn, 53, an interior designer who lives in Newport Beach, Calif., had her prized Siamese cat, Dylan, cloned by ViaGen earlier this year. The kittens were born in September and will come home to Dawn, who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons, in December.

When Dylan died suddenly five years ago, Dawn took immediate action to start the cloning process.

“He had a heart attack one morning, I rushed him to the animal hospital,” she recalls. “They couldn’t revive him, but my husband had been reading about cloning and knew to put him in a refrigerator, thank God.”

ViaGen expressed a kit for her to take a sample, and she’s been storing it with them for years, eagerly awaiting the company’s entrance into the pet market.

“Dylan took a piece of me with him,” she says. “Until now I thought that piece was irreplaceable.”

Meanwhile, New Yorker Rick Eisenberg is still debating whether he wants to replace his dog Rusty.

The mutt died at the end of September. Eisenberg was devastated and paid $1,600 for ViaGen to store a sample of the dog’s DNA.

But, having adopted Rusty from a kill shelter, Eisenberg wonders if the money would be better spent helping other needy hounds.

“I could rescue so many other animals,” he says. “I wanted nothing more than to re-create [Rusty], but I also recognize that even if you can make a genetic copy that will look and act remarkably like the dog you love, it is really just an illusion.’’