Cloned 9/11 Search and Rescue Dogs: A Doggie Dream Team

James Symington is working hard to teach his new canine brood some old tricks.

The former head of a Canadian police K9 unit has five German shepherds - all clones of his former partner, Trakr, an extraordinary search and rescue dog who throughout his career located hundreds of people, recovered $1 million in stolen goods, and found the last survivor at Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks.

Symington is training the genetic doubles - named Trustt, Solace, Valor, Prodigy and Dejavu - for search and rescue work in hopes of creating an elite team, providing free services to victims of any emergency situation or disaster worldwide where people are trapped or missing.

Such a service is desperately needed, given that last year alone 321 natural disasters occurred worldwide, he notes.

Symington plans on deploying Team Trakr before the end of the year.

"A highly mobile team of dogs with Trakr's abilities could make a difference in saving lives," says Symington, a Los Angeles resident.

The German shepherds were cloned for free after Symington won an essay contest held by BioArts International of Mill Valley, Calif., a now defunct pet cloning company.

A sample of Trakr's DNA was sent to BioArt's South Korean lab where, six months later, on December 8, 2008, Trustt was born. A few months later, four more black and tan shepherds pups were born, just days apart.

Scientists duplicated Trakr using a process called somatic-cell nuclear transfer, the same method that produced Dolly the sheep, the first mammal successfully cloned.

Symington is happy with the results.

"I am already recognizing some of the same traits that contributed to Trakr's success - strong play and prey drives; heart and determination and the ability to problem solve," he says.

Shortly after the births, Trakr - who had degenerative myelopathy, a progressive spinal cord disease that rendered his back legs useless - died. He was 16 years old.

Training the energetic male shepherds is already underway. Symington's focus is currently on obedience training as well as exercises that reinforce the dogs' inherent play and prey drives. These are the building blocks of any successful working dog, he emphasizes. In all, it'll take 600 hours of basic and specialized training before the privately funded team is mission ready.

Back in the day, Trakr excelled at tracking and air scenting, also know as the open search. When the shepherd located someone, he'd bark then become erect, with an arrow-straight tail and nose pointed in the right direction. "When you work closely as a K9 team, the handler learns to understand both the subtle and not so subtle indicators your canine partner gives you when he has found someone," says Symington. "Both are very valuable, especially in search and rescue where the victim may be buried in debris and you are pinpointing on a location versus physically connecting with the actual victim."

In an effort to help other mobile search and rescue teams, Symington recently established the Team Trakr Foundation, which supports organizations that train shelter dogs for this valuable, life saving service.

As far as his own team, Symington looks forward to the day the boys begin being deployed.

"Team Trakr is not about holding on to the past," he explains. "It's about continuing the extraordinary legacy of one remarkable dog."