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A hero dog who helped find survivors in the rubble of New York's World Trade Centre on September 11 is to be cloned.

Heroic German Shepherd Trakr with owner James Symington

Trakr, a German shepherd who lives with his owner, James Symington, in Los Angeles, has been chosen for the procedure by a Californian company.

BioArts International said the dog was the most "clone-worthy" canine in a competition offering an owner a free chance to replicate their pet.

Mr Symington said he and Trakr were among the first search and rescue teams to arrive at Ground Zero after the 2001 terror attacks that left about 3,000 people dead.

Together, they were responsible for locating the last human survivor under about 30ft of debris.

Now aged 15, the dog no longer has the use of his back legs due to a degenerative neurological disorder.

According to BioArts, experts believe the condition may be linked to exposure to toxic smoke at the World Trade Center site.

Mr Symington said: "Trakr means the world to me.

"To know that part of him is going to live on is just beyond words. It's the greatest gift I've ever received."

In the next month, BioArts said it would transport a sample of Trakr's DNA to the South Korean lab of its partner, the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, and that the clone could be ready by the end of this year.

South Korean experts have been cloning dogs since 2005.

In February a company in the South East Asian nation said it was offering the world's first pet cloning service.

Although cloned animals look like their predecessor, experts say their behaviour will not necessarily be the same - meaning there is no guarantee that Trakr's clone will be quite as courageous.

DFrost says ...

That's a crock. There is one unconfirmed story about a dog finding a survivor. Other than that, there were no known survivors found by dogs. Secondly, the story claims he was among the first. Funny, all those dogs on the east coast, yet a dog from LA arranges to be among the first. There were a lot of dogs there, in fact, there were so many, NY Officials asked to not send any more. It's not uncommon for untrained or poorly trained SAR folks to "self-dispatch" themselves to disasters. Of course this one was unprecedented, so it drew a lot of attention. It was kind of like watching Hank Aaron hit his record breaking homerun. At the time it happened there were like 35,000 people in the stands. Of course now there were hundreds of thousands that claim there were there. This article is a hot topic of discussion on SAR forum of which I'm a member. It's really a shame, a poser in the worst way. There was another person named Scott Sheilds, that also made some post 9/11 claims of fame in the SAR world. It was nothing more than a money scheme.

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The first when there were NO PLANES in the air except military for more than a week..... It takes three days to drive accross the country, I know I ve done it in 53 hours (one stop slept 9 hours) over 3,000 miles. They could have had have of the dogs on the east coast there in under one day...

 

there is a study group that has been following the dogs that were used at GZ and the Pentagon. According to their studies, they've not seen any abnormalities, health wise,  in the dogs used at those sites. Scott Sheilds, another imposter, was convicted, fraud I think, his sentencing is scheduled for September. It's funny the same orgaization that Shields was part of, is also the organization that this other poser is part of. funny how that works.