Five Puppies Cloned From 9/11 Rescue Dog
Posted by: Annika Harris
Filed in:
news
1:20PM, Thursday June 18th 2009
You might not remember Trakr the dog, but even after his death, he’s still making headlines. Trakr was the hero dog that located the last survivor amid the smoking rubble at Ground Zero. Five puppies were cloned from Trakr’s DNA after his search and rescue handler, James Symington, won the opportunity in an essay contest. Symington says the puppies look identical to Trakr, even down to the minute details. He plans to train the puppies to be rescue dogs if they have the same abilities as Trakr. “Few dogs are born with exceptional abilities – Trakr was one of those dogs,” he said in a statement released by BioArts International, the California company that arranged the cloning procedure. [People]
I’ve never been a fan of cloning, but I guess if it’s for a good cause like this—[Or cloning my dog Lucca.—Editor]—then it’s OK. I just wonder if the puppies will have any health complications or will even survive their first year, though.
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snap
wrote on June 18 2009 @ 02:02 pm: [report]
how is this a good cause? what is the cause?
Annika Harris
wrote on June 18 2009 @ 02:06 pm: [report]
Um, that they’ll possibly be trained to rescue people.
snap
wrote on June 18 2009 @ 02:17 pm: [report]
that’s noble… but this was an ordinary police dog that happened to be in an extraordinary situation—in the right place at the right time. he did his job—what countless of other police dogs do every day. cloning straddles some contentious boundaries, and it presses upon many people’s morals and values. cloning a dog for an essay contest to me sounds ridiculous and begins a dangerous trend of taking cloning lightly.
fallonthecity
wrote on June 18 2009 @ 03:16 pm: [report]
I can’t help but think this is awesome.
Annika Harris
wrote on June 18 2009 @ 03:21 pm: [report]
He won the opportunity to have the dog cloned by writing an essay.
Backliteyes
wrote on June 18 2009 @ 08:04 pm: [report]
@um no: while I agree it’s somewhat ridiculous, the handler stated the dog was not an “ordinary police dog” and that Trakr had exceptional abilities that few dogs are born with that helped him be a search and rescue dog. If you’re going to argue with the write-up at least you could read it carefully first.
Regardless the puppies are very cute and I want one.