News video:A Boca Raton couple who paid $155,000 to clone a deceased pet are feeling the spotlight of national media while helping the puppy adjust to his new family.
Sir Lancelot Encore spent his first Florida night in the master bedroom -- along with nine other dogs, various cats and two humans -- oblivious to the sensation he had caused earlier Monday.
The 10-week-old golden Labrador retriever is a clone, created in South Korea by a California biotech firm from the DNA of the first Sir Lancelot, the beloved pet of Ed and Nina Otto of Boca Raton.
The original ''Lancy'' died, at age 11, in January 2008.
A celebrity from the moment he bounded off an American Airlines flight Monday night at Miami International Airport, Lancy redux ''very quickly integrated into the menagerie and held his own,'' said Lou Hawthorne, CEO of BioArts, the firm that auctioned off five dog-cloning procedures last July.
The Ottos spent $155,000 to win the second-round auction.
''He's a spunky little critter,'' Hawthorne said. ``He was nipping and stealing things.''
By Tuesday morning, Regis and Kelly and the BBC were clamoring for the inquisitive, 17-pound bundle of energy. The Ottos say he is the first single-birth, commercially cloned puppy in the United States.
They already have a lot of dogs: Roxanne, Scarlett and Cadbury -- the yellow Labradors -- Henry, Hayley, Cassidy and Oliver -- the Cavalier King Charles spaniels -- Zoe the bichon frisé and Cartier, the teacup Yorkie.
They also have 10 cats, six sheep and four parrots. But with 12 acres in West Boca, there's always room for one more. So when the chance came to duplicate Lancelot, there was no hesitation.
He was just special, said Nina Otto, 66.
''He was a human dog,'' said Ed, 79. 'He read your emotions. He knew when to be with you and when to leave you alone. And he was the `crew chief' '' of the dog population, keeping everyone in line.
``He could understand English and read hand signals.''
Ed Otto calls himself a ''serial entrepreneur.'' His father, the late Edward Otto, cofounded both NASCAR and the Orange Bowl where, in the 1930s, he staged motorcycle races.
Money wasn't an issue when they heard about the auction. Indeed, the Ottos had cryogenically banked DNA samples from their beloved Lancelot five years earlier, hoping that some day they would be able to do what they finally did.
BioArts teamed with Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, a scientist with South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, to produce the dog.
Hwang, a controversial figure, lost his research professorship at Seoul National University in 2004 after fraudulently claiming he had cloned human embryos and stem cells.
He was, however, involved in creating an Afghan hound clone the next year.
To create Lancelot Encore, Woo-suk took an egg from what Hawthorne called ''an indigenous Korean dog'' resembling a bloodhound, replaced the egg's innards with the late Lancelot's DNA, then implanted the egg in a second Korean dog.
The procedure failed once, then succeeded, Hawthorne said. Two months later, Lancelot Encore was born, weighing 1.3 pounds.
The Ottos are certain he is the real deal. They say they trust Hawthorne, whom they have known for several years, since he ran a BioArts predecessor called Genetic Savings & Clone.
Were there any doubt, Nina Otto said, ``we could have [the puppy's] DNA checked. But I believe in people.''
The Humane Society of the United States lambastes pet cloning as ``fraught with animal suffering and false promises . . . There is no replacing a beloved companion.''
