Dog, Inc.

So you've probably thought about it--cloning a beloved pet. Well, apparently so have a lot of other people, many of whom have forked over the big bucks involved to actually do it, and not with the results that you might expect.

All is revealed in the new book, Dog, Inc., by John Woestendiek, a Pulitzer Prize winner and veteran reporter. A recent review in the Inquirer, where Woestendiek worked when he won that Pulitzer, calls the book "a science book that's highly entertaining."

The entertaining part is generated by the characters who are willing to spare no expense to clone their pets. One is a former beauty queen, Bernann McKinney, who invests in five clones of her beloved pitbull Booger and is determined to fly them all home from Hong Kong in the cabin of the plane. There is also the founder of Phoenix University, John Sperling, who actually creates a company to clone his girlfriend Missy's dog, at Texas A & M. They practice by cloning a bull named chance (the clone is Second Chance) who turns out to be not nearly as docile as his namesake.

Even more remarkable is the face that Missy, in the end, does not want the replica of her dog. In fact, that seems to be the general message. Dog cloning may not be the panacea it is purported to be.