Man Who Cloned Beloved Dog Reveals Staggering Cost & What He Had to Sell to Finance It

A man who cloned his beloved cocker spaniel after she passed away in 2016 is opening up about his decision to clone her.

Tom Rubython‘s world was rocked when his beloved dog Daisy tested positive for cancer. He’d had her since 2003 and described her as intuitive and closely tuned to his emotions while speaking to Telegraph.

“I knew this was going to be a problem,” he said about the prospect of losing his love. While researching answers to the dilemma, he and some coworkers stumbled upon Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, a Seoul, South Korea company that clones dogs.

In secret, Rubython went through the process of cloning Daisy, ending up with two dogs that bear her exact genetic DNA — Myrtle and Mabel.

He didn’t even tell his wife at the time. Now, he’s speaking candidly about how much the procedure cost, how he financed it and what his wife thought when she finally learned the truth.

Keep reading to find out more…

Rubython dropped nearly $108,000 to clone Daisy.

“I had two nice Mercedes sports cars at the time, and I sold both of them, which was just about enough,” he told Telegraph. “I thought, ‘You have your dogs, you have cars – which is more important? Which do you get more pleasure out of?’ And I decided it was dogs.”

After Daisy’s death, Rubython had to keep her body cold but not frozen to preserve the DNA. A scientist from South Korea came to extract the necessary DNA.

The dog owner paid for one clone, but the company offers a second “for nothing” just in case the first doesn’t take.

Cloning is not a guaranteed process, per the outlet. However, Rubython wound up with two dogs who were born via surrogate within approximately nine weeks.

Rubython was there to bring the puppies home after they were born.

Myrtle and Mabel were in quarantine for eight months before he could bring them home. When he did, he had to tell his wife about the decision.

Through some creative truth telling, he’d managed to keep the secret from her that whole time, since he knew “she’d have been absolutely against it.”

“She said it was like being robbed, without anyone having to hold a gun or wear a mask,” he admitted.

Despite her concerns — and her claim that the lab duped her husband — Rubython said “she adapted pretty quickly.”

As for what the dog dad thinks about his cloned pets, he says, “It’s not Daisy, but it is.”

They don’t look exactly alike, and their mannerisms are different, with Rubython saying they’re “even more loving.”

Looking back, he explained his decision.

“The aftermath of Daisy dying was easier for me because I knew we were having this done – I’m certain of that,” he admitted.

Responding to critics, he said that their thoughts are “valid.”

“Really, the correct moral thing is to go to a rescue and rescue a dog, and not have one cloned. You can’t argue with that. But it’s probably immoral to buy a yacht – you should take the money and give it to the poor,” he told the outlet. “We live in a very amoral society, where [there are] lots of things, silly things, we spend our money on.”

Earlier this year, a woman opened up about why she had some regrets about cloning her dog, which cost her much less than what Rubython paid.