Bereaved star gets pooch reproduced
BARBRA Streisand has told how she twice successfully cloned her beloved dog Samantha after the pooch died.
The Send in the Clowns singer, 75, had cells taken from the Coton de Tulear’s mouth and stomach so she could be reproduced.
Speaking of the resulting puppies, called Miss Scarlett and Miss Violet, Barbra said: “They have different personalities.
“I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have [Samantha’s] brown eyes and her seriousness.”
Speaking to America’s Variety magazine, she joked a portrait of the dogs should be captioned Send in the Clones.
The double Oscar winner explained how when the pets were delivered, she dressed them in red and lavender to tell them apart, which is how they got their names. She added that while waiting for their arrival, she fell for a distant relation of Samantha, who died last May.
The dog was called Funny Girl, after the 1968 film that launched Barbra’s career. The star adopted her and renamed her Miss Fanny after the character, Fanny Brice, she played in the musical.
The cost of cloning a dog can reach €80,000, but it is falling as more companies offer the procedure. One American firm, Viagen, charges around €40,000 to clone a dog and €20,000 for a cat. But animal rights group PETA criticised the practice. Ingrid Newkirk, the charity’s chief, said: “We all want our beloved dogs to live forever, but cloning doesn’t achieve that. “It creates a different dog who has only the physical characteristics of the original. Personalities can’t be replicated. “When you consider millions of wonderful adoptable dogs are languishing in animal shelters every year, you realise cloning adds to the homeless-animal population crisis.” She added: “We feel Barbra’s grief at losing her beloved dog but also would love to have talked her out of cloning.” TWO girls hug as students return to the scene of the latest US high school massacre.
Two weeks after 17 were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a huge US retailer announced it is to end sales of assault-style rifles like the one used.
Dick’s Sporting Goods will also no longer sell firearms to under-21s. Boss Ed Stack said: “We were so disturbed, we felt we needed to do something.”