My first dog was Fiorello LaGuardia Robins of blessed memory.  My father had a swell, deeply neurotic German Shorthaired Pointer named Nellie (as in “Wait Till The Sun Shines”).  We currently rejoice in the company of Emily the leaping hound.  I love, or have loved, all three.  But I wouldn’t want to clone them.

What I find fascinating is the human story (of course).  Lou Hawthorne, whose company cloned his mother’s dogs (after his stepfather invested heavily in the procedure) is awed by how similar MissyToo and Mira are to Missy, the dog from which they were cloned.  He owns Mira, about whom he waxes rhapsodic.  But Hawthorne’s mother, to whom he gave the other cloned dog, MissyToo, doesn’t like the new dog at all, and sent it off, like an unloved Victorian orphan, to live with “handlers.”  She had already adopted a puppy after Missy died, and says “I already have a dog — a real dog.”  Evidently she doesn’t understand the Velveteen Rabbit theory that one becomes real only by being loved into it.

Poor MissyToo.