Barbra Streisand has her favorite dog duplicated
Memories may be beautiful, but clones are so much better.
Award-winning actress, director and singer Barbra Streisand revealed to Variety that when her beloved coton de tulear dog, Samantha, died last year, Streisand had the beloved dog cloned.
Cells were collected from Samantha’s mouth and stomach, and the result is two pups, Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet, who are now happily romping about the singer’s Malibu estate. Streisand and her husband, actor James Brolin, also have a third coton in the family, a distant cousin of Samantha named Miss Fanny. Apparently the Streisand-Brolin clan is fond of formality.
Pet cloning became a thing about 10 years ago, when a distraught California scriptwriter became the first person to pay for a service that had previously been the purview of scientists cloning farm animals. Bernann McKinney paid a South Korean firm to clone her pit bull terrier, Booger, who had died of cancer.
The company produced five little Boogers, and the firm’s owner predicted the process would become so straightforward, it could produce hundreds more cloned pets per year. Diane Von Furstenberg and her husband, Barry Diller, cloned their Jack Russell terrier, Shannon, two years ago, and several non-famous people have dived into the genetics pool — and their savings accounts — to clone their pets.
Streisand says Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet, names that reflect the colors Streisand dresses them in to tell them apart, are still too young to show definite characteristics of their mom, but they do look a lot like her — and each other. “They have different personalities,” Streisand told Variety.
“I’m waiting for them to get older, so I can see if they have (Samantha’s) brown eyes and seriousness.” The coton breed was developed solely as a companion dog. The small, fluffly white dogs are attentive to their owners, liking nothing better than to be in their company. They are extremely friendly and happy little dogs.