Read Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog for Free Online

topic at the convention, at least at the dinner it was, arguments about cloning—could they, would they, should they? And a surprising amount of nervous joking to go along with the serious issues.”
    “It makes a lot of people nervous. You know something, Chip, it makes me nervous.”
    “Oh, come on, Rach. You don’t believe that, do you, that the younger dog is a clone? It’s so impractical. Can you imagine what it would cost to do that?”
    “They look exactly alike.” Lame, I told myself, not waiting for Chip to say it to me. “Well, they’re both white bull terriers, so I know what you’re thinking—why wouldn’t they look alike? But they have identical black markings.” I pointed to the outside corner of my right eye. “Here.”
    He sighed. “Rach. That’s fairly common in bullies. You know that.”
    I decided not to mention the little Hitler mustaches, or the strip of pink running up their snouts. Those things were far more common than the black smudge under an eye, looking like die remnants of a healing shiner.
    “You don’t think it’s possible?” I asked.
    “It’s preposterous,” he said. “The work that’s been done in Scotland and Japan, there’s big money behind it because it’s about making money, not about doing good. Rachel, Mother Teresa’s dead. There’s no one doing good anymore.”
    “Then someone’s gone pretty far out of their way to pull this woman’s leg, wouldn’t you say?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “What if what Sophie was told was a lie, Chip? What if this is about money?”
    “How so?”
    “Well, once they have the technology, couldn’t they clone, say, animals that do commercials?”
    “So that Morris the cat could go on forever?”
    “Precisely. There’s a lot of money tied up in those images.”
    “Why not the top-winning show dogs?”
    “Right.”
    “But then why not just do that? Why the whole seizure-alert business?”
    “Because even though they’d be able to prove they’re
    producing clones with impartial DNA testing, if they can also show that a particular talent translates, then they’d be able to say, ‘Okay, the clone will not only look like a winner, he’ll act like a winner.’ Now you’re talking big money.”
    “Except..
    “Except what?”
    “When you add up travel, handlers’ fees, advertising, entry fees, and incidentals, it costs one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand a year to get a dog to Westminster. Then add the cost of the cloning. Even if the clone did look and act like a winner, you’d never make money. No way.“
    “Okay, suppose the rich guy’s an epileptic himself. Or he has a close relative who is, his wife or his kid maybe.“
    “Could be. Still, he'd have to be stinking rich to try something like this.”
    I nodded. “Probably is.”
    “Rach?”
    “What?”
    “About the seizure alert. I wouldn’t think you’d have to go through all this. You get a bright dog with a willingness to take on responsibility, it could be taught. I’m sure of it.“
    “Me, too. But that doesn’t mean the stinking-rich guy would know that. No one’s saying it’s so, that it’s just an issue of focus and training. Sophie says the medical profession doesn’t even recognize that there is such a thing as a seizure-alert dog. They say the evidence is anecdotal.“
    “That’s exactly the sort of stuff I heard at the convention. And the sensible rejoinder—how could anyone run a study to test seizure-alert dogs when it would mean preventing the epileptic subject from taking the appropriate medication after the dog had alerted? To know if it was legit, you’d have to do just that, and watch to see if the person had a seizure.”
    “No one could be that cruel.”
    “Hence the notion that since it can’t be proved, it’s not real. So you end up with an underground of people who, despite what the doctors say, claim their dogs do indeed alert them prior to the onset of a seizure.”
    “Hence Bianca.”
    He leaned back