Dog Blog

At first it was single women. Then retiring baby-boomers. Now, Honda has sniffed out another growing demographic of potential car buyers in Japan: the dog-lover.

Japan’s No.2 automaker is looking to win points with canine fans using a website that offers information on dog-friendly cafes and hotels, dimensions for its cars’ cargo space for stashing cages, a rating system that ranks seat fabric for ease of removing dog hair, and much more.

Visitors to the Japanese-language site, called “Honda Dog” (www.honda.co.jp/dog/), can also find out about events where they can test-drive Honda cars with their pups, or view a race in a section reserved for dog-accompanied guests.

“There’s definitely a need there that wasn’t being met,” said Teruhiro Murai, an Internet marketer at Honda who came up with the idea seven years ago to fulfill his own needs as the owner of a golden retriever and miniature dachshund.

Honda may be on to something.

Thanks to a recent pet boom and a declining birthrate, Japanese now have more dogs and cats than they do children under 15. Detecting a trend, Honda came up with the W.O.W. concept car at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show designed especially for dogs: detachable, easy-to-clean seats, wooden floors and a netted, built-in pup-crate in the dashboard.

The site, which can also be reached by clicking on the dog on Honda’s Japan-based home page (www.honda.co.jp), gets 1.5 million page views a month. Internal surveys show that about 100 people decide to buy a Honda after visiting the site, Murai said.

“It helps to show people exactly how our cars can be canine-friendly,” said Tokio Isono, a fellow dog-lover and a chief engineer of Honda’s cars.

The new Freed minivan, launched in Japan on Thursday, is a perfect example, he said.

The vehicle has the lowest floor yet among Honda’s minivans, at just 39 cm (15.35 inches) from the ground to the rear section, while the cargo space is just 48 cm off the ground.

“It’s low enough even for my dog, May,” Isono said, commanding his short-legged, three-year-old corgi to jump in during a demonstration for reporters.

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Dog-conscious car shopping also has legs outside Japan.

Independent site dogcars.com, with readers clicking in from the United States to Russia and beyond, provides reviews and “paw” ratings for vehicles and pet gear such as backseat restraints and de-shedding combs.

Toyota Motor has also pricked up its ears, creating a rival site to Honda Dog last year in Japan. (http://toyota.jp/corolla/dog/)

Still, the Japanese juggernaut may have some way to go to catch up with Honda’s dog-friendliness: dogcars.com’s first-ever “DogCar of the Year” award went to the 2007 Honda Element SUV for its easy-to-clean interior and anti-noseprint windows.

“Thanks, Honda,” raves an Element owner in a user comment. “You were trying to fill a surfer dude niche and you accidentally made the most rockin’ dog-friendly vehicle ever!”

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First it was Dolly the sheep, now the much loved family pet is about to be cloned.

A US biotech company is preparing to hold an auction next month to give five wealthy pet owners the opportunity to have their dog cloned.

The company has already created three cloned dogs and it now offering to clone five more with the bidding at the auction to start at more than $100,000.

The three puppies are clones of a border collie and husky cross called Missy, who died six years ago.

“We had this amazing dog named Missy and right after Dolly was cloned, I guess it was early ‘97, we were just sitting around the breakfast table and we said, ‘Hey, let’s clone Missy,” Lou Hawthorne said.

Mr Hawthorne runs a small biotechnology company based in California.

Using genetic samples taken from Missy in 1997 and again after she died in 2002, they were able to produce their first clone.

Mira was born last year and since then two more cloned puppies have been produced.

Mr Hawthorne says dogs are difficult to clone because they only go on heat twice a year, at irregular intervals.

To clone the dogs, cells were taken from the original animal and inserted into the nucleus of an egg, which is then transferred into a donor animal.

“For instance, Mira, who is a black-and-white dog, she was carried by a large yellow dog who looks sort of like a large basset hound,” he said.

“And to see this large yellow dog nursing this black and white collie, it’s a little bit odd.”

Now they’re making the technology available on a commercial basis and next month will open a global online auction to clone five dogs.

But the process isn’t cheap and Mr Hawthorne says opening bids will start at $100,000.

“It could easily end up being price comparable to a luxury car, or a vacation house,” he said.

“It’s not going to be cheap. But then the process isn’t cheap, it’s a very complex and expensive process.”

Bringing Fido back to life may not pose the same ethical questions that cloning humans might.

But medical ethicists like Dr Leslie Cannold says it does complicate questions around life and death.

“There’s no doubt that it is challenging the typical notions of grief and loss. That particular pet will never exist again,” she said.

“Because when you clone that pet what you’ll get is the same genetics so it’s almost like a genetic copy, so a twin of the previous pet.

“But there’ll be a different environmental influence and so the pet will in some ways be different.

“So in some ways you do have to grieve the loss of the pet that you loved, but in other ways there’s sort of a technological comfort being offered here that you don’t lose everything.

“You get in some senses, a chance with that pet again.”

But Mr Hawthorne says cloning won’t diminish the lessons of life and grieving for those who lose a beloved pet.

“If you love a mutt and they’re almost always spayed or neutered by the time you realise how amazing they are for you, you really love a breed of one and you love an infertile breed of one,” he said.

“So the question is, are you going to let that breed go extinct or are you going to look at assisted reproduction to have your next dog be the same breed of one.

“This project is really a celebration of the mutt.”

His biotechnology company BioArts has been granted the sole international licence to clone cats, dogs and endangered species.

But the firm has partnered with a team in South Korea headed by the disgraced scientist, Hwang Woo-suk.

He was forced to resign from Seoul University when it was revealed that female researchers donated their own eggs to his cloning project.

Mr Hawthorne acknowledges the association is controversial, but he says Dr Hwang is the best dog cloner in the world.

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