How Easy Is It to Clone Your Pet?

American gridiron great Tom Brady announced the successful cloning of his beloved pet dog, a pit bull mix named Lua, in early November 2025. Although Lua died in 2023, a blood sample taken before she passed away provided all the material needed for Colossal Biosciences, Brady’s pet-cloning company of choice, to produce Junie, Lua’s clone. Brady is also an investor in Colossal Biosciences—the group that claimed to have brought dire wolves back from extinction in 2025—which acquired another cloning company, Viagen Pets and Equine, about the time of Brady’s announcement. So, while the wealthiest of us have been able to afford this technology since CC (the world’s first cloned cat) and Snuppy (the world’s first cloned dog) were born to surrogates in 2001 and 2005, respectively, is pet cloning still out of reach for the rest of us? If not, what does the practical and ethical pet-cloning landscape look like?

Mammal cloning first burst onto the scene in 1996 when English biologist Ian Wilmut created a clone of a Finn Dorset sheep called Dolly. She became proof that other mammals—including pets, livestock, and possibly even humans—could be cloned. Modern pet cloning follows the same technique used to clone Dolly. The technique, called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), places the nucleus of a somatic (body) cell from the older pet into the cytoplasm of a donor egg whose nucleus has been removed. If this transfer is successful, the cell becomes a zygote (which divides numerous times to become an embryo) that develops within the uterus of a surrogate mother, which gives birth to the new living pet. This new pet is genetically identical to the old pet, but, while it may look the same, pet owners should be prepared for the new pet to have a different personality and behaviors. After all, the new pet’s environment and life experiences will be different. So, in the case of Lua and Junie, the two dogs are essentially twins.

There are a lot of pet clones out there. For example, records show that more than 1,500 pet dogs had been cloned by 2022. Although the cost of cloning remains very high, it might not be as expensive as you think. You don’t need the resources of a future Hall of Fame NFL quarterback to clone Fido or Mr. Whiskers. Viagen Pets and Equine, for example, charges upward of $50,000 to clone a cat or a dog and $85,000 to clone a horse. Still, handing over such a large amount of cash doesn’t guarantee a healthy, living clone on the first attempt. The success rate for dogs and cats tops out at about 30 percent, so several attempts could be needed to produce a viable offspring.

Additionally, there are ethical concerns to consider. Americans remain divided on animal cloning, with a minority of respondents (ranging from 29 to 40 percent) consistently rating the practice as morally acceptable in a series of polls conducted between 2001 and 2025. The cloning process involves surgeries to harvest donor eggs from a living animal and to implant an embryo into a surrogate, and then the surrogate must give birth to the new pet. Some critics note that this burdens the various other animals involved in the process with unnecessary pain and exposes them to harm (including an increased risk of infection and gestational conditions) while providing no real benefit to the animals or to society at large. In a world where there are already too many pets and too few adoptions, cloning an old pet may also deprive a needy shelter pet of a home. Despite the appeal of living with an identical copy of that beloved fuzzy family member, understanding the process and carefully considering the ethics of pet cloning may be reason enough for some people not to attempt it.