Karma Runs Over Dogma
My dog, Wasabi, is now almost 13 years old and is beginning to feel his age. He is starting to have trouble climbing stairs and has become prone to skin infections and other health problems – sometimes requiring him to wear a cone around his neck to keep him from chewing on himself. He is a large breed dog (Labrador / Chow mix) weighing about 80lbs, and as such, he has probably already reached his average life expectancy.
So, knowing that he is on his way out, I recently purchased a new puppy – a pure breed chocolate lab named Bosco – both as a replacement, and also to help keep Wasabi young. I figured that having an energetic puppy around would encourage Wasabi to play, and that he would get more exercise. I hoped that Bosco would keep Wasabi healthier and happier for longer than he would be without such an energetic young companion.
Sadly however, it turns out that Bosco is an asshole…
I mean, he is cute and lovable, but he is not easy for Wasabi to live with.
Bosco likes to play fetch, but he apparently does not understand that while we are happy to throw a toy for him, 
Wasabi does not have the necessary physical equipment, or understanding, to perform this task. Bosco will regularly bring a toy over to wherever Wasabi is trying to take a nap, and drop it next to him. He will then start whining and barking incessantly at Wasabi, even after Wasabi starts to growl and even sometimes snaps at him. If Wasabi gets up and leaves to find someplace more peaceful to nap, Bosco will soon find him again. When I try to separate them, Bosco will climb over any barricade I errect or seriously scratch up any door I close.
I have been feeling kind of bad that instead of making Wasabi healthier and happier, Bosco may just be turning Wasabi’s final years of life into an annoying ordeal. I have been trying to make it up to him in any way I can, but until recently I have had no really good ideas abut how to make things right.
But that changed recently, when I found out that Dog Cloning has now finally been perfected, and is being offered to the general public. It seems that despite the ongoing resistance to cloning technology by various religious types, it continues to improve. The price is still well out of my range, as the first auction for one of the first 5 commercial canine clonings, starting on July 5th at 11:00 AM PST, has a minimum bid of $100,000. However, it occurred to me that I can have Wasabi’s genetic material frozen and stored indefinitely at very low cost, so it is actually very likely that I will be able to bring him back when the prices come down in a decade or so.
So that is what I can do for Wasabi – I can have him resurrected.
Now, a clone of myself would not really be Sean Hastings in a meaningful sense, but rather, would be a separate individual much like an identical twin. However, unlike a human being, a dog does not have very much memetic content, and what it does have could be more easily recreated, so a clone of Wasabi would almost certainly behave very much the same as Wasabi does.
It would be far more (even if not entirely) accurate to consider Wasabi’s clone to be the same dog than it would be to consider my clone to be the same person.
And it would certainly be poetic justice if the dog cloning process becomes affordable for me in say, 10+ years, and I can bring Wasabi back as a puppy when Bosco is then approximately the same age that Wasabi is now. Then Wasabi can have his revenge by being the rambunctious puppy that harasses the poor tired old Bosco.
Now If that’s not karma, I don’t know what is.