Ten years on, the string of sausage dogs that owe their lives to cloning
SIDE by side, these sausage dogs are not just the best of friends – they are three generations of the same family.
But Mini Winnie, ten, her son Wally, five, and granddaughter Whoopie, just five months, would not exist if it was not for modern science.
Mini Winnie was cloned from dachshund Winnie ten years ago after her owner, Rebecca Bourne, won a competition.
And while Winnie produced a litter, the pup Mrs Bourne kept was unable to have offspring. So that left Mini Winnie to continue the family tree.
‘It’s worked out pretty well. It would have been pretty sad if Winnie’s line had run out,’ said Mrs Bourne, 39, from Hundon, Suffolk.
Winnie was given to Mrs Bourne on her 18th birthday and she credits the dog with helping her through spells of bulimia and depression.
As reported in the Daily Mail at the time, her beloved pet was copied in 2014 – although the £60,000 procedure was carried out at a laboratory in South Korea as it is illegal in this country.
Scientists extracted Winnie’s DNA and placed it in a donor egg, which was carried by a dog surrogate. Four months later, Mini Winnie made the 15-hour flight to the UK to meet her double.
‘I know they say you can’t clone personality… but Mini Winnie is just like Winnie,’ said Mrs Bourne, who runs Rebby Rabbits, which makes handmade art for children.
Winnie died in 2017 aged 17 after she was hit by a car. But her dynasty continued as Mini Winnie had a litter of two pups in 2018. Mrs Bourne kept one, Wally, who mated with ‘local girl’ Sassy last year, producing four pups including Whoopie.
Despite looking just like the two Winnies, the younger pups are very much their own dogs. Mrs Bourne said Wally is ‘very bossy’, while Whoopie wants to ‘eat everything’.