Can Your Dog Be a Person?

We love our dogs, don’t we?

Oh yes, especially when our kids grow up and fly away — sometimes far, far away — a dog can be (almost, not entirely) a kind of replacement.

My wife and I have one, the fabulous Jolene (see her above). Note: our two daughters live in Los Angeles, 3,000 miles apart from us. You get the picture.

Such companionship! Such love and devotion! Jolene is nestled beside me on the couch as I write this.

But a dog, as loving as she/he can be, is not a human.

And yet…Lately I’ve been reading some wild stories about the lengths dog owners will go with their “babies.”

For instance, a new “dog first” airline called Bark Air offers luxurious flights for dogs and their owners. The dogs can roam around the aisles or sit on their owners’ laps or hop up onto an airplane seat or stretch out on doggie beds.

The passenger dogs are offered snacks, beverages, noise-cancelling earmuffs for when the engines rev up and “calming jackets” in an effort to ensure they have a stress-free flight.

Guess how much you will be charged for this? There are two available routes and here are the fares — to go from New York to Los Angeles, $6,000 per dog and owner. If you want to fly from New York to London, that’ll cost you $8,000.

Our kids would love to welcome Jolene to Los Angeles. But this seems — a bit much. We have a wonderful couple who take care of Jolene when we visit L.A. And so we see no crying/barking need to make a reservation with Bark Air. But I’ll bet that business is “taking off.”

“Would you clone your dog?” That’s the question posed in a really, really long story in the current New Yorker by Alexandra Horowitz. She examines a Texas-based company, ViaGen Pets & Equine, the only business in the U.S. that clones dogs. (The process is patented.)

Since 2005, Horowitz reports, more than 2,500 dogs have been successfully cloned.

When you hire the folks at ViaGen, they will cryogenically preserve your dog’s cells and, when you give the signal, generate a new dog from those cells. The cost: $50,000.

Horowitz interviewed a Long Island man, a retired cop named John Mendola, who is happily living with Princess Ariel and Princess Jasmine. They were cloned from his deceased “much mourned” dog Princess, who was part Shih Tzu and part Lhasa Apso.

I didn’t have time to wade through the entire epic story but Horowitz did raise an ethical issue: why spend so much money and go to all that trouble to clone your dog when there are so many wonderful, naturally-born dogs in shelters, in need of adoption? We adopted Jolene after she was rescued in Laurel, Miss.

Would I clone Jolene? No, I would not.

I find the idea a tad creepy.

News article number three, from the New York Times: goldendoodle owners are flooding social media with videos and photos of their lovely creatures to show “the humanlike behavior of their pets.”

In one such video a goldendoodle named Brady gazes contemplatively out floor-to-ceiling windows “into the summer foliage beyond.” This video has been viewed more than 92 million times on TikTok.

The dog’s owner, Lawrence Skutelsky, said this wasn’t the first time he’d noticed Brady “acting like a human.” Skutelsky breathlessly reported: “I came home the other day from the office and he was, like, literally laying in my bed, under the covers.” (Really? How did Brady do that? Does he also make the bed?)

“When I look at him sometimes,” Skutelsky added, “I don’t know, it’s like he’s trying to say something.”

The Times reporter, Jessica Roy, also tracked down Molly Dolan of Charleston, S.C., who posted a video of her goldendoodle walking upright on two hind legs across an entire street. That one got more than 6.5 million views. (Is this what people do all day?)

Meanwhile, TikTok user and goldendoodle owner “Nolan” asked: “Does your dog have normal eyes or does your dog have strangely human eyes that make you think he’s trapped the soul of a human person inside of his body?” That too went “viral.”

Sure, if you look at that photo of Jolene sitting in her favorite chair, you could tell yourself — dang, she looks like she’s thinking deep thoughts and is about to start sharing them with me!

Message to dog owners, especially those who own goldendoodles: yes, your dog is very cute. OK, adorable. And smart. But your dog is — a dog.