Your Pet In Perpetuity

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 7, 1999 / 1:26 PM EST / CBS

Many of us have known the sorrow of losing a favorite dog or cat. Now, a company in Escondido hopes someday to reunite owners with their favorite pets, or at least with clones of them. Reporter Larry Himmel of KFMB in San Diego has the story.

Canine Cryobank is a clinic that specializes in storage of sperm and artificial insemination. Sperm is shipped overnight to its facility for later insemination in local animals.

But what is gaining this clinic a worldwide reputation is a different type of reproduction, or perhaps re-creation.

Frozen cell cultures are being kept here "on ice" in preparation for being thawed whenever a facility somewhere in the world perfects a technique for cloning. After all, sheep have been cloned. A dog clone cannot be far in the future.

Mickey Polimeni is hoping that's true. She has had cells from her deceased dog deposited here: "The only purpose of my having him cloned for me would be because I want my companion back," she says.

News About Animals

At Canine Cyrobank, they've even invented the harvesting kit. It allows a client to harvest a cell and mail it back in a box.

Who knows? In the next millennium, loving pets may be reunited with their past life families. For now, that plan is on ice.