A Florida couple was devastated after their dog died of cancer, but they had a plan and now their dog is a puppy again and he’s barking in their home again. The couple paid a California firm $155,000 to clone their beloved Labrador retriever.

The 10-week-old coned puppy was delivered to the couple’s home in Boca Raton, Florida, by BioArts International, a biotechnology company.

"One minute with Lancey and you know he's special. He's both extremely aware and very sweet," said the company’s CEO Lou Hawthorne in a statement. He added that, although people think that cloning dogs is a step towards cloning people, it is actually more difficult to clone a dog.

The couple, Edgar and Nina Otto, first thought about cloning their dog about five years ago. They have frozen Lancey’s DNA and sent the sample to the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, which works with BioArts.

The dog, which had died of cancer last January in 2008, was born November 18 to become the world’s first commercially cloned dog. The 17-pound, golden-haired clone of the pooch was named Lancelot Encore.

"He looked just like my original Lancelot," said Nina, 66. "The most interesting thing about this Lancelot we notice he's bonded immediately within an hour with every other pets in the house. He's the Alpha dog!"

The wealthy Florida family has half a dozen dogs, 10 cats, six sheep and four parrots. Otto, the son of the NASCAR founder, said his wife sold some expensive jewelry to pay of the cloning services.