Tom Brady’s dog was adopted. Her clone wasn’t. Let’s talk about it.
Recently, Tom Brady made headlines for cloning his late dog, Lua.
As someone who has loved and lost dogs myself, I understand the longing that kind of grief brings. When your soul dog passes — the one who lived in your heart and under your desk and followed you from room to room — you start to look for them everywhere. You see a dog who reminds you of yours now gone, and you smile or maybe ache a little. You start to think, maybe if I could find one just like her, it would help fill that space.
When a dog takes up that much of your heart, it’s only natural to want them back exactly as they were. But the truth is, no amount of science can bring back that dog. Science can create a stranger with familiar DNA, sure. But all those little moments — the unique quirks, the bedtime routines, or that time your dog refused to go outside in the rain until you both ended up dancing in it anyway — can’t be spliced into a cell.
Lua was adopted, and that in itself tells a story. She was a dog who was given a chance, who found love, and who gave that love back tenfold. And in shelters across the country right now, there are thousands of dogs just like her waiting for their person to find them. At Best Friends, we work with shelters in every corner of the country, and what we see every single day are dogs like Lua waiting for a chance — the same one that she once had.
And that’s what makes this story resonate so deeply. Because while cloning may re-create a body, it can’t re-create a bond. We build those bonds through time and trust, through the ordinary and the extraordinary moments of life together. Neighborhood walks, little nose nudges, afternoon naps together … those are the moments that solidify that bond between human and dog. Love doesn’t need to be engineered; it just needs to be chosen again.
When you adopt, you open yourself up to a new love. You say yes to another chance and to all the unknowns along the way. And I think that’s one of the most beautiful parts of this work: watching people realize that love doesn’t run out when one animal is gone. No, it simply changes shape. And it grows and multiplies every time someone says yes to adoption.
Right now, that yes matters more than ever. There are thousands and thousands of dogs in shelters — especially large, blocky-headed ones like Lua — waiting for the day they have a home to call their own. And with millions of families adding a pet in the coming year, if just 1 in 17 more of them chose adoption instead of buying (or cloning, in this case) their new pet, we could end the killing in shelters.
So here’s my pitch: You don’t need a lab to find your next soul dog. You just need a leash and a visit to your local shelter. You’ll find Lua there — maybe with more brindle, or a perkier ear, or a stubbier tail — but still Lua in all the ways that matter. And she’ll be thrilled to meet you.
Because the real miracle isn’t that science can re-create a dog. It’s that love keeps showing up again and again in every shelter kennel, every wagging tail, and every dog who looks absolutely nothing like the one you lost but somehow fills that same space in your heart.
-Julie
