You won’t believe how far people go to honor their pets—DNA, ashes, even full-on cloning.
This episode will touch your heart and expand your view of what love and remembrance can look like. 🐾💛

In this heartfelt follow-up to our popular “Creepy Post-Mortem Keepsakes” and “7 Unique Memorials” episodes, we’re exploring the powerful and sometimes surprising ways people keep the memory of their beloved pets alive. From traditional ashes and paw prints to virtual tributes and scientific cloning—this one’s for every soul who has ever loved and lost an animal companion.

🕊️ Whether you’ve said goodbye to a dog, cat, horse, bunny, hamster, piggy or other beloved companion… you’ll find something meaningful here.

💡 In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

•  What people are doing with ashes: art, jewelry, and biodegradable urns
•  The creativity of 3D-printed pet replicas and full-scale bronze statues
•  How apps and AR are changing digital pet memorials
•  A touching listener story from the horse community
•  The real process and cost of pet cloning—and what it actually means
•  Unique keepsakes made from fur, paw prints, sweaters and old toys
•  Why grief for a pet can feel just as heavy—or heavier—than human loss

🐾 If you’ve ever loved an animal, this episode will stay with you.
Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review if this touched your heart.

🔗 Learn more or work with Joy: https://www.joyfulmedium.com

🎙️ Listen to previous episodes:

•  “Creepy Post-Mortem Keepsakes” – https://www.joyfulmedium.com/blog/Haunting-Keepsakes
•  “7 Unique Memorials” – https://www.joyfulmedium.com/blog/unique-memorials

#PetLoss #AnimalGrief #PetMemorial #SpiritSpeakeasy #Mediumship #PetCloning #GriefHealing #AnimalLove #SpiritualPodcast

Episode Transcript: 

Hey, beautiful soul, welcome back, or welcome in for another episode of spirit speakeasy. Today, we're exploring something tender and deeply human, the many ways we honor and remember our beloved pets after they cross over. Today's episode is called from ashes to cloning the wild and beautiful ways we memorialize our beloved pets. For many of us, animals aren't just companions, they're family. In fact, some of our deepest bonds may actually be with the pets who walk beside us through the seasons of change, heartache, healing and joy of our lives and when they go, the grief can be just as heavy, sometimes even heavier, than when we lose a human loved one, because the love of our pets or our beloved animals is so pure, so uncomplicated and totally unconditional. This episode was actually inspired by a beautiful message from one of my students. You'll hear that story a little later on in the episode. It follows up on two of our recent episodes where we explore human memorials. If you remember, we had that creepy post mortem keepsakes episode and the seven unique memorials episode where we talked about turning grief into art, Inc trees and stardust. So if you loved those, you'll definitely want to stay with me for this one. In this episode, we're diving into the heartfelt, creative and sometimes even high tech ways people are choosing to memorialize their furry, feathered or hooved soul mates, from horse hair jewelry to DNA infused crystals and 3d printed replicas and full scale bronze statues. You'll hear inspiring stories rituals and even a listener submitted tribute that might just move you to tears. And no, this is not just for cats and dogs. This episode is for the bunnies, the hamsters, the horses, the piggies, and every beloved animal soul who has ever left paw prints or hoof prints on your heart. So as we dive in, some of these do have some overlap with some of the ways that we memorialize our human loved ones, but there are some really interesting spins on some of these animal memorials, and as you'll see a little bit later in the episode, some of these are incredibly intricate and high tech and maybe even a little science fiction esque things that I don't know if some of us thought we'd see in our Lifetime. So this first way I want to talk about memorializing our pets has to do with ashes and what to do with them. There are so many creative ways people memorialize and incorporate their pets ashes. There was a time I didn't even realize people kept the ashes of their pets, but they do. So not only could you keep the ashes in just like a lovely urn or container, but you also could get the ashes infused into glass jewelry or even glass sculptures, so that blown glass that we've talked about before, or even glass sculptures, you can also Take those ashes and have pottery that is actually glazed with the cremains mixed into the paint or actually molded into the clay itself, right mixing some of the ashes into that clay to make beautiful vases or other pottery or little sculptures. You could even have some of the cremains used in pottery to make the vessel that you're going to contain the rest of the ashes in, if you wanted to. There's also, of course, cremation art, which involves painting or mixed media pieces that use or incorporate the ashes in some way into the actual painting itself. And of course, we all have now, hopefully, if you've listened to those other episodes, heard about tree planting with biodegradable urns. So the urn itself is actually biodegradable. The ashes go inside with compost material, and then is planted and a tree sprouts right out of there. So there are lots of wonderful ways to incorporate the ashes. If you are someone that had a pet or a working animal that you loved cremated, and you want to use those ashes for something besides sitting on your shelf, there are so many creative ways to do that, but even more creative and even more out of the box, especially if you're someone that doesn't have the physical ashes, there are these incredible digital age memorials, so kind of these innovative tech forward ways of honoring our pets. And that brings me to the next section that I want to talk about. So there are some really creative one. Ones under this headache, I have to tell you, this one actually includes virtual pets. So essentially, it is like a digital like an app in your phone or on your tablet that keeps a digital version of your pet alive. Now there's some different versions of this. Some of them use, like memories and photos. Others of them, you make, actually a little avatar of your pet, and you interact with the animal. So that's another way that you can do it. You can kind of keep their little personality in the app and kind of have a have them as a virtual pet, since their physical body's not here anymore, you can virtually still interact through the way that they take the memories and photos that you submit or you upload, to really go towards more of a realistic likeness of that pet. Choosing the features, you can even choose colors or little beds for them. So it really depending on the app really does get quite intricate what you can do. Another different version of kind of a techie, innovative way of of memorializing your pet that I hadn't even ever thought of, is 3d printed replicas of your pet using photos, yes. So there are so many things that they're making on these 3d printers. I don't have one, but I have definitely ordered some little jewelry and and even, like a little tie thing that's, you know, it's usually plastic. It's like a hard plastic. So I, in my deep dive, of all of the research, found that there are people that'll do it for you if you don't have a 3d printer, but there are lots of people doing these on their own, where you put in several images, and then you actually can set up the printer to print a 3d version of your pet. Now, these are small, so think of it as kind of like action figure size, or smaller, even those little trinkets that we, you know, just kind of keep on a shelf, so kind of toy sized, right? And some people got really creative with these. Some people just printed it out. Some people printed a mold, actually, and then used that mold to create other pieces of art, which we'll talk about in a minute. But some people took that raw printed
figurine, I guess, is what it is, of their pet, and then actually used the photos to go in and do really detailed painting to actually make sure that they were capturing the specific markings of the individual animal. You know, different animals have different markings, of course, but to make it really, really realistic and really like exactly in memorial of your pet, it's not just any orange cat. It has, like the stripes of yours, and the white circle around the eye, or whatever it might have been, the 3d printing thing was really intriguing to me, just because, you know, sometimes it's cool to have something that's just really totally personal. Now, along this line of these digital age memorials, I'm not an AR person, augmented reality, that's those, like goggle things we've probably all seen on TV and movies, but there are these augmented reality experiences where you can kind of go into this 3d World and and spend time with your pet. And there's also a QR code that can be created that shows the pets in motion, and you can hear the sounds that they're making. I have a feeling there's lots of video on things that needs to be submitted as part of this to make it super, super authentic, but there are probably ways through all of the different pet things that have been submitted, like, if you only have videos and photos of your pet, for example, but you don't have anything of them making a sound or really moving around a ton. I'm sure that they could use all of this amazing technology to make your pet move. I had a dog that passed away a handful of years ago, beloved family member, and she, there's lots of pictures of her, a few videos which she wasn't too much of a mover and a shaker. She was more of a chillaxer, I'll say. So you can have this augmented reality or through a QR code experience of your pet in this virtual reality space, there are also similar to people, human souls, pet Memorial websites. So if you're also not into the virtual reality thing and wanting to wear the goggles and sit with an avatar of your pet, that way, you can create, or have someone else create a memorial website for the pet. It could be interactive. It can be like a digital scrap. Book, even where maybe, you know, if you had a super popular dog, for example, or horse, maybe other people can put their pictures and stories and share, and that's just a really cool way of memorializing. This is leading me to my next section, which has to do with creative and unique keepsakes that people keep. This is sort of a next level, or maybe a more tangible way of doing that, Memorial website or interactive digital scrapbook. This is actually a legacy journal, and there's a scrapbook version of it, but a legacy journal, what is that? Okay? There are all these wonderful, amazing, creative and talented human beings out there that have thought of such incredible ways of memorializing, and this is one of those. So this is actually from the perspective of your pet. So quote, unquote, written by the pet or the animal. It's written in the voice of the animal or the pet. And you can even go as far as hiring a writer or a grief coach to really write this for you, like if you don't feel like you're a writer, if you don't feel like you could write something in the voice of your pet, and they will sit down, almost like a ghost writer. If you've ever been involved with like writing books at all, or known anyone that's written books, it's a person that's more of an expert writer, but they're writing your story well, they're writing your pets story, and they can even do it where they're writing in the voice of your pet. One of the beautiful things is this can even be created for children, like perhaps, you know, you had a pet, and you're the adult, and there are kids in the family who really love this pet or animal. I know, not everyone calls their animals pets. So you can even have this done for a kiddo a book from the perspective of the animal. That's a children's book. It could be more explaining what happened or where the animal goes, or it could just be explaining, you know, the journey of the the animal, the kids can actually be written into the story in some of these, if you choose. So this one is really super creative. And if you feel like you're I so often have some of you. You know, when you come and sit, sit with me for readings, tell me that you're not creative. If you feel like you're not creative. There are wonderful souls out there that are more than happy to let you hire them for their creative services as writers and grief specialists. So I thought this legacy journal was a really cool idea, and that sort of the next level of that is this legacy journal and a full scrapbook, which is like you would think, photos, maybe paw prints in there, letters, tags. You can even write out some stories of things that life experiences and memories with your animal. You know, maybe you went places with them. Maybe they're a riding animal, and you actually rode them and had different experiences through training and all of that. So it really can be totally personal and individualized. And these journals, scrapbooks, can be bound into professional books, like, if you've ever seen you know, people send in their photos that then they get bound into, like, hardcover books that can be done with these they can be children's books. They could be memoirs. You could even go as far as to write like a whole graphic novel from the perspective of your animal or incorporating your beloved animal. Okay, so that is in the writing section of these unique and creative keepsakes, I just continue to be astounded by the creativity of people and the beautiful things that they make. The next one in this section is these were really cool, sculpted, sewn, felted stuffed animal versions of your furry friends. Okay, I wasn't too sure what this one was going to be. I found a lot of different examples on Etsy. I will have a source list in the show notes. If you wanted to look at doing some of these ideas with your own animals, or if you just were like, I want to see what that looks like. I have some the links, some links in the show notes. So check those out. This is one of them, so it is essentially made from felt or soft material, sculpted, sewn. So it's sort of like a stuffed animal, but that is where the simplicity ends. I saw so many kinds of these. So some of these, if you've ever seen them, do, like, Excuse me, like 3d print, not 3d but like printed photos on fabric, like, if you ever ordered a t shirt and had, like a photo printed on there, well, they can take tons of images of your animal, like a dog a cat. I saw guinea pigs and bunnies and hamsters and any type of little holdable animal that you saw. I saw. Representation of it on on Etsy specifically so they there's different ways that they do it. They take different images of your animal, and they print like the whole side of the animal would be printed on one piece of fabric, the face would be printed on another piece of fabric. The other side would be printed on the other side, and they stitch it all together, and it's printed on there. But there are even more intricate versions of this where they actually use soft felt and fur. Some of it seemed like they might be using actual fur or hair, and they were, if you've ever seen a long time ago. I don't know if this is even still a thing, because I know malls don't really exist a ton anymore, but these are these kiosks in the mall or in gift shops, and they were often little cats or kittens, and they just had this soft, what seemed like actual fur all over them. And it's sort of like that, but it's made to look in the likeness of your beloved animal. So it's sort of like a stuffed animal, but like to a whole other level. I'm going to be real honest, some of them, I it was a stretch to say they looked like the animal. Others of them were spectacular, where it was like, wow, it almost not, not in a creepy way. And you guys know, hopefully by now that, I mean, all of this was so much love, but it almost reminded me of like a taxidermy, where they take the actual animal and do the embalming and preserve them,
you know, like, like you would see, like a pheasant or a deer hanging type thing. But it's actually not made with the animal. It's not taxidermy. It's all stuffed and felted. There are some incredible crafts people that are doing this. And the price range, I was very curious about that. I saw some that were starting at like $60 and even even in the lower price ranges, if you've ever shopped on Etsy, you know there are these different sales that these shop owners will just periodically have. There were so many sales, but the price range was from like 50 ish dollars all the way to like $500 so you can have this as intricately done as you want based on the artists. But these were just really, really incredible. And a little part of me is secretly thinking about making one of these for for my daughter, actually, because she didn't get to say goodbye to her best friend our dog that we had. So they're just really incredible. I encourage you to take a look now. That's something that you can hold and hug. They're not just for kids, by the way, lots of adults have them and make them whether you want to keep it on a shelf or you want to keep it on your bed, where your animal love to sleep, and you can have them in different poses. I know I'm going on about this one for a little while, but I just found it really intriguing. So if they're like at sitting at attention, or if they're just laying down cuddly, you can have them created in different action poses or relaxing poses. I just was blown away by this one. So a really fancy version of this is what I want to talk about next. This is sculpted or bronzes of your beloved animal. These go from small size up to, like full size, actual size of a horse. And this essentially is sort of like, if you've ever done any tourism or gone to any town center, typically, there are these giant bronze statues, sometimes of like a man on a horse. So it's sort of like that, like life sized bronze or sculpture. There are these artisan studios that craft it's like a quite a process. So this is sort of a fancy version. They craft a clay model from the photos, videos, whatever you give them. They make the clay model, and then they cast them in bronze or brass or stainless steel. These are meant to be outdoor sculptures or statues. I saw them often when I was looking in people's like gardens or in the front of their home, kind of in Memorial spaces, really commemorating these beloved pets and lifelike details. I saw one that had one of the owners. There was a gentleman in the sculpture with the pet, like holding the pet. So I think you can get as intricate with these as you want. They are quite expensive, as you might imagine, because it's like a whole bronze sculpture that you're having made. And if you've ever visited, like sculpture gardens, or maybe you've seen someone that had, like a beautiful water fountain feature in the front of their house. It's sort of along those lines where they, you know, do, they do the clay sculpture and then they cast it in brass or bronze. They are super heavy, as you might imagine, but they capture just these incredible details. Because their hand sculpted initially and then cast in bronze. So sometimes some of them were even really showcasing, like iconic poses of the animal or expressions. I saw some of these for particularly like horses or like show dogs or working dogs. There was one that was really special, that was some version of what looked like a German Shepherd. To me. I'm not a dog expert, but this had been a working dog, like a like a police dog, and they had just the most gorgeous bronze and his tongue was out, and even the eyes looked so happy and realistic, even though it was a bronze sculpture. And I think bronze is beautiful. You know, it patinas over time. So if you own a home, and you feel like you would like to add a decorative element to your yard, the reason why I say if you own, because if you rent, I don't know if someone would want you putting a six foot bronze of your horse in front of your house. But, you know, hey, some landlords are flexible, but that was just a really cool kind of next level artisan piece that you can commission someone to do for you. Okay, this next section is really about using things like the fur paw prints and clothing. These are more tangible craft items. It's a different version of craft on these you'll see. So there are some people that will create for you needlework, which is sort of like the little cross stitches, if you've ever seen those, or just those sewn. Sometimes it's like a happy saying. Sometimes there's a little picture, or they'll even do it as your dog or cat or animal of any kind, they will take the actual fur or the thread from any clothing that your animal had and use the fur, the actual fur or hair and the thread and create these needle work pictures or sayings, which I thought was really incredible, that feels really, really old fashioned to me, because I do remember having seen lots of little, you know, craft stations over my life where they had almost like that alpaca fur or like llama fur, and they use it to weave beautiful pictures and intricate mandalas and things. So it's essentially like that. You can also take that fur. There's a way that they do it, where they brush it and they really get it into shape, and then they can spin it into actual yarn. So they can take the fur, if you have, like a, like a long haired cat or like a, you know, I think it has to be something with substantial fur. I would guess, really short hair. I think would probably be really hard. But they can actually take the brush, first, spin it into yarn, and make yarn out of this fur that could then be used to make bookmarks or tassels or other wall art, they they're again, creative, amazing human beings out there will take, like if you have an old sweater from your dog or a blanket from your horse, or leashes, for example, and they'll take all of that thread and they'll turn it into incredible mandalas, which are the Big Round pictures that are very geometric and symmetrical, or even stitched designs, or even interesting kind of portraits of the animal using the thread like we're talking about. So these are lovely because they're sort of non intrusive.
And you can also use the paw prints. So if you have the paw prints. A lot of people will put them in things like, you know, those garden stones, those like cement stones that you could put your little hand print or a paw print in. You can make them into Christmas ornaments and things, anything that you can use to make a baby hand print or footprint you can use to make an animal paw print or hoof print, unless it's like a giant hoof and then you might need a little more material, but you could still do it. So think of like when you press, you know, a palm print or a baby footprint into like a clay heart or something to make a wall hanging, or to make an ornament or to make just keepsakes. You can definitely do that. You could also use ink instead of clay to make it framed. If you didn't, you know, want to use clay. There is paw print jewelry. So if you have the paw print, what you can actually have someone do is shrink it down and etch it into jewelry, resin, metal. There's even crystal molds that people will make. And again, there's that Ash infused jewelry that they do too. So you can kind of do it a twofer if you wanted, if you had ashes, but if you didn't. And we talked about this in the in the human keepsake episode, if you didn't have the ashes of their physical body, for example, but you had some, you know, old sweaters. And items of theirs and beloved things non toxic, and don't do it yourself. I might, I might have someone help you with this or do in an outside area, safety, first, friends, obviously, at least nobody hurt yourself or do anything crazy. But you can burn some of their things, the items right, or even paper that you've, you know, written to them, and create ashes, if you don't have ashes up their physical body to do some of these with. If you like this next session section is really special. And these are getting into these heavy hitter ideas that I was talking about at the top of the episode. This one I want to touch into our community rituals and shared grief, because sometimes we feel like we need to hold our grief all on our own, and I feel like this is especially true when it comes to our beloved animals. Often, if you're grieving a person, right, a parent, a grandparent, people are sympathetic for that, I find that most of us feel like people will not be so sympathetic. Of US grieving the loss of a pet, right? And some people are incredibly sympathetic, but I think that the human nature is like, well, maybe I'm going to keep this to myself because I'm really upset, but I think no one's going to take it seriously. So I think this is so beautiful, because it shows that we can have community around this type of grief too, and there is a very particular community that really bands together when one of their beloved animals is going to cross over, and that is the horse community. So this is that story that was sent in by my student that I wanted to share. I'm going to read it the way that they wrote it. I'm going to remove out, you know, pronouns and names and things, but hopefully you'll be able to get the gist. So this was written after those the odd keepsakes, the creepy keepsakes episode. This was written and I just really inspired me to do this episode. And hopefully when I read this to you, you'll see why. So they said I wanted to share a morning keepsake ritual that remains currently common in the horse community. When their horse dies, many owners keep hair from the tail. Some owners keep only a lock or two. Others cut a bob tail and keep the majority of the tail length. If you've ever seen a horse, you know their tails are really long, so a lot of owners keep just the entire tail. Apparently, the hair is braided and tied with ribbon until the owner decides what to do with the keepsake. Options include braided bracelets or necklaces, lockets with swatches of woven hair, pottery with bits of the hair burned into the glaze, or a swatch made from the entire tail that can be used as an extension for a living horse during horse shows. Did you know that horses wear extensions for horse shows? We're learning so much, guys. Okay, they go on to say, while this must seem oddly morbid to many. To horse folks, it is a comfort. I have a necklace, bracelet, locket and ceramic pot made for my horse's hair while both were still living, because it's just the hair, right? You don't have to wait until they pass. You could do it while they're living. For me, it's no different than having a piece of art commissioned. The result is not only beautifully ornamental, but it's personally sentimental as a barn family, any and all available boarders leave their work duties, spouses dinners and dishes. When we get the call that a horse is dying, we bring coffee, cookies, tissues and carrots for a last horse treat or in lieu of grave flowers, someone always has scissors and a ribbon at the ready. We trim the tail per the owner's request, or assist them to do so we have a good cry and perhaps a consolation cookie, and as we wash braid and bag the hair for safe keeping, we share memories of the horse that we will all grieve in the coming days, because we forego a formal funeral with the food and flowers, saving a bit of tail hair is our way to show respect for the equine and the owner. As I was departing the barn after my beloved horse died, my best barn buddy friend came to my car with a big black trash bag, she said, gently placed it in my trunk, hugged me and said, Only the best horses go to heaven with a bob tail. All the angels will know how much your horse was loved. How special is that, you guys. I had no idea that this whole community tradition was happening. This is something that's been going on a long time. And how beautiful that when one person is waiting or assisting their horse and crossing over, everyone drops what they're doing, their work, their dinner, their family time, and comes to surround. Owned, and how sweet is it that they're bringing carrots instead of flowers? I just thought that was so incredible, and what a special way to memorialize so you could make your own version of this, whether it's with a community or whether it's just with your own family or just yourself. You could make a special tradition of this yourself, if you wanted to. The last section that I want to talk about is sci fi meets sentimental. Okay, these are more scientific based memorials. There is so much that they are doing with DNA Now, folks, I don't know if you're going to be surprised, but I certainly have been over the years, so they can do things like we talked about with the humans, where they can take DNA and they can turn it into diamonds or jewelry if you wanted that. So synthetic diamonds, glass pendants using the actual animal DNA. They also, this is a little unusual, but they also create custom microscope slides with bits of the DNA on it. If you want that, they will do fur whiskers or blood to preserve it on the slide. So you can look under your microscope and see your animals whiskers, if you want. They also do this for archival reasons, like if you had specifically like thoroughbred horse, for example, with the DNA and artistic reasons. So some people are not using these in a scientific way, and are just using them to have framed or they keep it in a box with a little loop a little magnifier so they can look at it. Now, I think the most extreme of the DNA with the pets is pet cloning. Yes, there are people cloning their pets. There is full scientific cloning available from the DNA of your pet. This is really happening. So what is pet cloning and how does it work? I'm going to give you all the deets right now. Actually know someone that has gone through a good bit of this process, so it's been really fascinating to learn about it from them over the years, and then to dive in and do a little research on it myself. So this pet cloning, the method is used. It's called somatic cell nuclear transfer. It's the same technology that produced Dolly, the sheep. For those of you that remember when we were cloning sheeps in the early sheeps sheep in the early 2000 there was Dolly. She was the first clone sheep. So it's essentially that same process. A skin tissue sample is collected from your pet. This can either be done through a biopsy while they're still alive, or it can be done within five days of their passing. So it is something you have to sort of plan for and choose pretty quickly if you're going to choose it, they can do it while your animal's still alive, just to harvest that DNA and store it for you. Or you could do it within five days of your animals passing. And then in the lab technicians remove the nucleus from a donor egg, like an animal egg and insert the nucleus from your pet's cell. So replacing the nucleus of a donor egg with the nucleus of your pet's cells and an electrical stimulation fuses them, which creates the embryo. So sort of similar to, I guess, what they do in in Bucha to create an embryo. That embryo is then implanted in a surrogate mother of the species that the animal is. So if you're cloning a dog, for example, there is a surrogate dog that that embryo will then, you know, it's like, like, IVF, the embryo goes into the dog.
This is pretty pricey, as you might imagine, and there's often a bit of a weight. So a cloning a dog or a cat costs around 50k and what I found is that it's often paid. You know, they let you make some payments, payment plan, or do it in a couple different installments, and there can be up to a five to seven month wait list before the cloning of your actual animal begins because, believe it or not, there is pretty high demand for this. Alternatively, there is a DNA preservation option, if you are not ready yet, but you do want to preserve this option, you can, like I said, even if your animal's still alive, you can retrieve that DNA through the biopsy, and then you can send it to one of these companies, and they will store the tissue for future cloning. The cost of this is roughly like between 15 102k us, and then 150 a year to do storage. So you pay an initial fee, and then you are paying them to store that genetic matter for you from your beloved animal. This is really interesting. There's like a whole system in place for this, and there's more than one company that does it. This is pretty advanced at this point. So what is the surrogate process? A surrogate which is, you know, the the egg donor and sometimes the pregnant carrier, that sometimes those are the same dog in this. Example, sometimes they're not so they impregnate that dog, and then the dog carries the embryo, dog, the puppy, your DNA clone puppy, to term, and births it into the world. A lot of these companies, kind of similar to what they do with IVF, are implanting multiple embryos per surrogate to improve the chances of an actual viable birth. I just have known so many people that have gone through the in vitro fertilization process and and worked to, you know, have babies other ways, and this just sounds so similar to what they've gone through with that. So they implant multiple embryos with the hope of having, you know, at least one that is brought to full term. For example, there, there was the first clone dog. Was called snuppy like puppy, like puppy, and Snoopy had a baby. Snoopy, it was the first clone dog in 2005 it involved 123 surrogates and over 1000 embryos just to get one viable puppy. Now that is not the norm these days. That was the first time it was done. So it took them a lot of tries. So what is the actual success rate looking like on this these days? And I also want to touch into some ethical considerations for those of you that are going to be very concerned about that there, the truth is, there are still high embryo failure rates, which means many surrogates are needed. It's, it's it's hard to do this process. It's not always successful the first time. And on the other side of this coin, of this miracle that this cloning can be, there are some welfare concerns being raised for some of these animals, because they need multiple surrogates. Sometimes the cloned animals something else to be aware of. They are not the same animal because they're cloned, so they are technically a genetic twin, but they're not perfect, perfect replicas. There are environmental factors that influence the personality and appearance. The other thing that I got really curious about, just in a purely nerd mind kind of a way is I really was like, okay, so kind of similar, like I was saying to human surrogacy, right? You take the embryo and you're putting in this surrogate dog, well, some of the dog's DNA as the mother is crossing into that amniotic fluid and, and they said, Yes, like that is happening. So even though it's a genetic clone there, there is a certain percentage of the surrogate dog's DNA that gets mixed with this dog's DNA as just part of it. And while the dog often looks quite similar in appearance, the personality is not guaranteed to be the same. And I my the person that I know that was in the process of doing this, we ended up having several conversations about the soul of the dog, right? Because the the animals that we have a relationship with, I believe you don't have to subscribe to this belief, but just like we are a soul having a human experience, I believe our animals also our soul. If you've ever had an animal that was part of your family that you loved. You know for sure, there is a soul inside there. It's not just empty in there. So I think some of my concern was, you know, of course, for the mother and for the puppies, and how, how does this actually look? And just to I really wanted the person that I knew to know that there's this very high likelihood that the same soul is not going to come into this clone dog that was in your dog that you love so much. And we're going to do another episode soon about personality and our soul, but if a different soul came into that dog, then that dog might have a lot of different personality. They might have some similar traits just because of the genetic component of it, but is it going to be the same soul that you knew that you love so much? Probably not. I can't say 100% for sure either way, and I think sure it could be possible, but I don't think it's the likelihood. So there are just some concerns in there. From what I understand, I can't prove this that. I think you'd have to do some like spot checks to see but they say the surrogates are treated incredibly well, and as soon as they deliver litter, they're retired. So it doesn't seem like they're trying to create a puppy mill situation where the same surrogate dogs are used over and over. It seems like they do one time of it, and then they are retired from that, and they're not bred again. I hope that is the case. So there, believe it or not, at this point, when I am recording this episode, there have been over 2000 1000 dogs that have been cloned since 2025 maybe not a lot. It's about 20 years. So 2000 dogs, including via this company called Biogen one example, after two failed attempts, there was a Canadian cat named bear that was successfully cloned twice. So not only can you have your cat cloned once, but you can have it clone twice, and they ended up with two kittens that were the genetic match of the cat that they were wanting to clone for $50,000 some people have reported after having this done, you know, because this is a very unique group of people. This, you know, it's 2000 dogs. I don't know how many cats, I don't know how many horses. I don't know what else they're doing this with, but it's a unique group of people. Not everyone has experienced cloning an animal. So as you might imagine, they're surveying them and having follow up conversations. So some people are reporting that the clones have a lot of the physical traits, even mannerisms, like, if your dog, my dog used to, like, we called it a wiggle butt. She used to kind of WAG, wiggle her whole back half. She was an English bulldog, so she kind of wiggle her whole back half in a certain way. Maybe the clone dog is doing that same trait. Or maybe they turn their head in just the exact same way. Maybe they, you know, mannerisms, they have similar mannerisms to the dog that they were cloned from. Though, a lot of people remote report, report that the emotional resonance varies like they might not have the same temperament. They don't have the same exact personality, and the emotional connection that they give is not it varies. It's not always the same, but I just thought that was such a fascinating way that we're memorializing a beloved animal is to actually clone them, to create them again. And I wonder how far we are away from trying to do this with humans. I know there are a lot of sci fi movies about it, but with pets, I just think it's so fascinating and interesting that if you really wanted to make this huge investment, you could have your dog cloned, what some people do that I know, especially if your dog, or the Horse, for example, is purebred from breeders that are very experienced. You can go back to that same breeder and have a same it's not the same, obviously, but have a animal from one of their litters again, and that is often where they're getting their temperament. It's in the breeding and in the way that they're handled in their early days. So if you felt like, well, it's a big commitment to do this full cloning process. You could also just get a very similar type breed, or even perhaps, depending how long it's been, the same parents of the animal that you had. So this is a hugely emotional process. I know that the cloning thing is very charged for a lot of people, because there are just so many
scientific elements, to look at ethical elements, to look at human elements, emotional elements. So that one's a lot and very interesting, but I'm curious to know what you guys think about it. So whether you yourself have kept a lock of fur, made a special Memorial candle with their picture on it, planted a tree with their ashes, commissioned a sculpture, or simply sent out the whisper from your heart that you miss them into the stars in the night sky. Know this, your love really matters, and your grief is sacred. There's no right or wrong way to honor an animal that you've loved. Some rituals are really elaborate. Others are private and simple, but all of them carry the same heart, a deep desire to say, you mattered. You remembered. You're still family. You're still with me. So if you've been looking for a sign to create a little ritual of your own, this is it. You can light a candle. You can write that letter. You can wear the bracelet with your pet's name on it. You can name a star for them, because the truth we know is love never dies, and neither does the bond between souls, no matter how many legs they walked on or how much fur they had. So I hope that this has been an interesting and maybe even eye opening episode for you for how we memorialize some of the most significant souls in our lives that are some of the closest beings to us. I think we sometimes confide in and hold our animals in spaces in our lives where we don't even let the people we love into those vulnerable levels of our life. So I think it's important to at least think about special ways that honor that relationship that is so pure and so deep between us as humans and the beloved animals that we have in our lives. Thanks for joining me today. Feel free to reach out if you. Got a story or a share, even if it's a sign from an animal, because animals give signs as well. So I hope this has just opened your mind one inch wider and got those wheels turning about how you might want to memorialize an animal that you loved, or how you might want to start thinking about a memorial for someone else that has an animal that they love. Big hugs, lots of love. Bye for now from inside spirit speakeasy