When her beloved dog reached old age, Barbra Streisand could not bear the thought of losing her.
So she arranged for Samantha, a 14-year-old coton de tulear, to be cloned.
It meant that when Samantha died last year, the 75-year-old singer could have two adorable puppies, Miss Scarlett and Miss Violet, to remember her by.
Not content with that, while Miss Streisand waited for the puppies she became smitten with a third coton de tulear, distantly related to Samantha, which she adopted and named Miss Fanny.
Puppy love! In an interview with Variety, Barbra Streisand revealed that she had her 14-year-old Coton de Tulear Samantha cloned…twice
She has now shown off all three online, posting a photograph of her new arrivals on picture-sharing site Instagram with the caption: ‘Our new basket of adorables.’
The cloning process is likely to have cost at least £70,000 – one US firm, ViaGen, charges £36,000 to clone a dog. The puppies were cloned using cells taken from Samantha’s mouth and stomach before she died.
Miss Streisand dressed one in red and the other in lavender so she could tell them apart, hence their names.
Despite looking identical to Samantha, they have different personalities, she said.
She added: ‘I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness.’
Science at work! Before Samantha died, cells from her mouth and stomach were extracted and used in the cloning process that cost upwards of $100,000
Puppy love! In an interview with Variety, Barbra Streisand revealed that she had her 14-year-old Coton de Tulear Samantha cloned…twice
The third puppy was named after the singer’s character Fanny Brice in the film Funny Girl.
The actress spoke about her three pets during an interview with US showbusiness magazine Variety at her Malibu home and, referring to one of her hits, joked that she wanted a photograph they took captioned ‘Send in the clones’.
In November, she spoke of her grief at Samantha’s death. ‘She was always with me,’ she said. ‘The last 14 years she went everywhere I went. She was at every performance. It was like losing a child. It was kind of awful.’ However, critics questioned whether Miss Streisand should have spent a fortune having her dog cloned when there are so many pets looking for homes.
Ingrid Newkirk, president of animal rights group Peta, said: ‘We all want our beloved dogs to live for ever, but cloning doesn’t achieve that – instead, it creates a new and different dog. When you consider that millions of wonderful adoptable dogs are languishing in animal shelters every year, or dying in terrifying ways when abandoned, you realise that cloning adds to the homeless animal population crisis.’