What breed was the first cloned dog?

The first cloned dog was an Afghan Hound. Named Snuppy, the male puppy was born in South Korea in 2005 after researchers transferred genetic material from an adult Afghan Hound into an egg cell.

A team led by Hwang Woo-suk at Seoul National University used a skin cell taken from the ear of a three-year-old male Afghan Hound named Tai. The resulting embryo was carried by a surrogate, and Snuppy was born by Caesarean section on April 24, 2005. His name combines SNU, for Seoul National University, with “puppy.”

Dog cloning proved especially difficult because canine eggs mature inside the reproductive tract and are difficult to collect at the right stage. The team implanted embryos into 123 surrogate mothers; only two puppies were born, and Snuppy was the sole survivor. Although Hwang later became notorious for fabricating human stem-cell research, independent testing confirmed that Snuppy really was a clone.