Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash

This is the cloned pooch of Iceland’s former president which is now being trained by a prominent American dog coach in Aspen in the USA.

Former Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, 76, and ex-First Lady Dorrit Moussaief, 70, had their beloved dog Samur cloned in October 2019 in Texas and the new pooch Samson is now reportedly in the popular skiing destination Aspen, Colorado, with dog trainer Ted Hoff.

Samur died in January 2019 but his clone Samson is seemingly fit and healthy under trainer Hoff, who told Newsflash: “Samson is being trained on my ranch near Crawford, Colorado, two hours drive Southwest of Aspen.”

Reports state that the clone recently underwent surgery but Hoff assured that it was just a neuter operation, saying: “Samson was recently neutered and has recovered. Samson is an incredible dog to train.”

Moussaief’s decision has caused some controversy, as the cloning process reportedly still requires several dogs to produce one clone.

Many of the cloned pregnancies fail to take hold in the uterus or die shortly after birth, according to the Smithsonian.

And Alexandra Horowitz, who heads Columbia University’s Canine Cognition Lab, has said that cloned pooches will not necessarily have the same personality as their originals as “everything is in the interaction of that genome with the environment”.

And Kari Stefansson, the CEO of deCODE, a genetics company, said Samson would be more like an identical twin rather than an exact copy, meaning it is likely to have different personality traits to Samur.

Samson means ‘the son of Samur’ and follows the Icelandic tradition of providing names that indicate parentage.

The ViralTab page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.