Giving the dog a clone: Labrador duplicated from dead pet's DNA becomes a father itself

The dog who was cloned after his grieving owners could not bear to say goodbye has become a dad.
Lancelot Encore fathered eight pups born to a Labrador bitch - which are now being offered to the public.
The birth means that saga of Sir Lancelot - Lancelot Encore’s own ‘father’ - continues to a new generation.

Dog gone? Lancelot Encore fathered eight pups born to a Labrador bitch - which are now being offered to the public

SEND IN THE CLONES: THE BOOMING INDUSTRY OF PET CLONING

 While Sir Lancelot may be the first dog to have ever been commercially cloned, he was not the first pet to be doubled.
In animal cloning, the stored DNA of the animal is then injected into the egg of a surrogate dog. The South Korean firm is the only one to have perfected the technology as of yet.
A cat called Little Nicky earned the title as the first commerically cloned pet when a woman in Texas paid $50,000 for the service.
Though the practice has not been completed publicly for many years, scientists have been grappling with the technology for over a decade at this point.
The most famous instance was Dolly the sheep, who was the first mammal to be cloned from a somatic cell in 1996. 

Owner Nina Otto, from West Boca in Florida, said she was ‘tickled pink’ that the babies had arrived naturally, although the mother was artificially inseminated.
She has set up a website labraclone.com which offers ‘future pups from the past’ and will use it to sell seven of the puppies which are a mixture of cream and fox-red coloured.
Mrs Otto however declined to reveal how much they would cost.
She said: ‘I am keeping one and we are hoping to find good homes for all the other puppies.’
Mrs Otto explained that she paid a few thousand dollars for a lab to inseminate the female Labrador, who is called Scarlett.
 
Normally a mother pays the stud to breed, not the other way round.
Another issue was that Lancelot Encore is not registered by the American Kennel Club because of his cloned background.
Mrs Otto said: ‘We needed a female and there were a lot of people that might not have wanted to use a dog that might not have had a pedigree at the time’.
The litter was born on July the Fourth and so they have been given names to reflect how patriotic it made Mrs Otto feel.

A big little pup: Lancelot Encore, pictured as a puppy, who became the first commercially cloned dog in 2009, has now fathered a litter of eight

New pup: Lancelot Encore was the first commercially cloned pet and his owners paid $155,000 for the service

True inspiration: Edgar Otto and his wife enjoyed the original Sir Lancelot for his 11 years of life

They are Glory, Liberty, Star, Allegiance, America, Patriot, Independence and Victory.
The pups are being kept with their mother for the time being but will eventually be given up for adoption should people come forward.
Mrs Otto and husband Edgar became famous in 2009 when they paid $155,000 for Sir Lancelot to be cloned after he died of cancer.
The couple, who own nine other dogs, won an auction by US science company BioArts which made them the owners of the world’s first commercially cloned dog.
Sir Lancelot’s DNA sample was sent to a South Korean lab where it was put into an egg and the clone was born.
Mrs Otto said that Lancelot Encore is a living copy of his ‘father’ and even had the same habits and movements - like crossing his paw when he sits down.