The company we reported on last year, Genetic Savings and Clone, hasn't yet managed to clone a dog, though they had said they expected to do so in 2005 using their chromatin transfer technique. They are a fair number of kittens down the line, but so far the original goal of cloning billionaire John Sperling's mutt "Missy" has eluded them. Meanwhile the dog owners are queuing up for the day when dog cloning eventually becomes comercially viable.
And surprise, surprise! A prestigious breeder of SHOW SIBERIAN HUSKIES is one of the "early adopters"! Dr. David Qualls DVM of Indigo Kennels in Florida wants to clone his Siberian Husky bitch CH. INDIGO'S INVISIBLE TOUCH! Here's the GS&C link to prove it (just scroll down past the first couple of clients)
http://www.savingsandclone.com/clients/and_dogs.html
And oh, the shame of it all. Curious fool that I am, I checked out her pedigree via PawVillage:
http://pawvillage.com/pedigree/pedigree.asp?ID=AWSH8441
Only to discover that this is a descendant of my long-ago 1960's sidekick CAN. CH. TROIKA'S BOIKA, via a daughter of hers TADLUK'S BOIKA REPLICA that I bred when I was green and ignorant, by the expedient of breeding BOIKA back to her sire ALAKAZAN ZHOOLIK O'RACECREST (whom I very shortly thereafter discovered was epileptic as well as pathologically shy). I'm not proud of the breeding, notwithstanding it seems to be part of the "star" pedigree of CH. INNISFREE'S NEWSCENTS NIAVAR. I learned better breeding practices pretty quickly. But it looks like the showdog people never learn . . .
I'm not that happy to learn that I'm involved in SH breed history yet again, not by that avenue! Interestingly enough, AKC's present policy is that they will not register a clone -- but one has to suspect that perhaps Dr. Quall's knows something the rest of us do not know as yet, or that he has "political" connections in AKC. The GS&C story makes a big point of the SH clone-candidate being the result of "twenty-five years of effort" and of Dr. Quall's seeing the cloning as "a fantastic opportunity to preserve our efforts." So one could see this as a straw in the wind or a trial balloon.
AKC showdogs of the Siberian Husky breed already display a cookie-cutter similarity for the most part. What will it be like when and if AKC decides that the $30,000-50,000 cloning process (the price isn't set yet for dogs, but we are warned it will be more expensive than it is for cats) is just another tool in the AKC showdog breeder's kit?
For what it's worth, I. S. A. and W. C. A. C. do not allow "reprotech" solutions in the Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed. There will be NO cloned Seppalas in our future.
It's a wacky marketing ploy, but somehow it's irresistible -- I'm talking about PBWiki's peanut-butter-sandwich logo and their assertion that creating a new Wiki is as easy as a peanut butter sandwich! Being both a Wikipedian and a confirmed consumer of peanut butter, I was hooked almost instantly. Especially since the entry-level service is FREE!
The result is SeppalaWiki, backed by the resources of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project, conceived as a permanent Wikipedia-style Seppala knowledge base.
http://seppalawiki.pbwiki.com - SeppalaWiki
There are several advantages to the Wiki as a web format: its markup is easy and undemanding, it creates its own directory structure as text hyperlinks are added and new pages created from them, more than one person can work on the same Wiki, even at the same time, it can grow gradually and painlessly with pages constantly open to editing. By the way, the word "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian expression "wiki-wiki" meaning fast or quick.
SeppalaWiki is open to public view, but its editing functions are password-protected to prevent vandalism. However, if anybody's crazy enough to want to help write a Seppala (and legacy-sleddog in the broadest of terms) encyclopaedia, just ask and I'll be happy to give you a password -- provided you're serious about contributing. It IS a whole lot of work, because every page introduces new link-terms that in turn deserve their own pages. To give an example: Leonhard Seppala --> Poland Spring --> Walden-Seppala challenge race --> Chinook Sled Dog --> Byrd Antarctic Expedition -- etc. etc. etc., and almost any entry can be extended infinitely in any desired direction. Take a look at Wikipedia if you don't understand what I mean:
Wikipedia - "Seppala Siberian Sleddog" article