Carbon copy cocker? Not quite Inside the laboratory offering owners a way to clone their dog

At first glance, Gem is a happy spaniel. With a plush toy in her mouth, she is the embodiment of joy – but her straightforward demeanour belies the complexities of her origins, because Gem is not your typical dog. She is a clone.

- Nicola Davis

Ever since Dolly the sheep was revealed to the world in 1996 – the first mammal to be cloned using an adult cell – debate has raged over the potential for the technology, and its ethical implications.

Yet the menagerie of animals cloned by researchers has continued to grow, from "Snuppy", an Afghan hound puppy, to sheep, piglets, mice, cows and even macaque monkeys. Now the technology has moved into a new, commercial market: pets.

"Gem is actually a present from one of our clients, because she's a clone of a working cocker spaniel," says Lucy Morgan, manager of UK-based Gemini Genetics. "We get photos and things [from owners] but actually having a cloned pet where I can remember the day that her original skin sample came in… yeah she's really quite special."

Pet cloning has become big business in the US, with Barbra Streisand and Paris Hilton among its early adopters. However, cloning animals is banned in the UK, except for research purposes, and even then, approval from the Home Office is required. As a result, Gemini Genetics does not conduct cloning itself – but it does facilitate the process, and has done so for about 30 such animals so far.

Based in Shropshire, the company works from a small laboratory within a complex shared with other companies, including Stallion AI Services, an equine semen storage and distribution centre that works with rare breeds, among its other activities.