My Sammie was curly haired and that’s why my husband initially picked her out for me as an anniversary present — she was the odd one, different, just like I felt as a little girl. One of the reasons I chose cloning was because I couldn’t find another curly-haired Coton.

And then I got a call from the lab. Not only did the cloning process take, but it produced four puppies! Unfortunately the runt of the litter died before the puppies were old enough to be delivered to me.

But still, five dogs were too much for me to handle, as a person who was used to taking my dog everywhere with me, and who never had more than one dog at a time living in my house.