On the mantelpiece is a sign saying "A home is not a home without a dog". Next to it, in the couple's living room, is a framed picture of a dog, which is itself nestled among various dog ornaments. The kitchen, where Laura Jacques and Richard Remde's four dogs primarily play and rest, is similarly adorned. Upstairs is the couple's super-kingsize bed, roomy enough to accommodate two humans and four dogs. Even the toilet has a little stuffed dog propped up on a wicker basket.

Visitors to the couple's home in Silsden, West Yorkshire, are left in no doubt about the importance of dogs in their lives. Their four dogs will soon become six, when they bring home two cloned boxers, the first in the world to be duplicated from a pet that had been dead for more than two weeks.

Jacques works as a dog-walker — a job she adores — while Remde runs Heritage Masonry and Conservation specialising in restoring intricate ancient structures to their former glory. But their lives revolve around their animals (they also have seven guinea pigs, two rabbits, a hamster and a gerbil). They have been together for six years and say a love of animals is one of the things that brought them together.

Jacques has studied canine behaviour and has spent a lot of time volunteering at the Dogs Trust. The couple have just moved into a new house, one they bought because it has a lot of land for the dogs to run around in. One corner of the paddock area has been earmarked as a pet graveyard. Dylan, their eight-year-old boxer who died earlier this year and posthumously provided the cells for two cloned puppies, is to take the first plot.

"We have stored Dylan in the freezer until the garden is properly finished off and then we will bury him in a wooden coffin," says Jacques. "Richard is going to make him a gravestone. But I don't feel I'm ready to bury him just yet."

"Throughout Dylan's life I worried about how I would cope when I lost him," adds Jacques. "The vet often used to say to me that his temperament was not a typical boxer; it was as if he was a different dog in a boxer's body. He was so gentle. We talked about getting married and I really wanted Dylan to be at my wedding. He was so soft that children used to climb into his basket and fall asleep with him. If I was sad he knew instinctively and would lick away my tears. Just looking at him made my heart melt."

When Jacques received the news from the vet that Dylan had died she collapsed in shock and grief. "I couldn't comprehend that the worst possible thing had happened. I was like a zombie, I was just in total shock," she says. "We did everything wrong with the cloning process and had no real hope that the cloning would work. We knew that a dog had never been successfully cloned so long after death before and thought: "Why should it work for us?' But it did."

The couple say they know how controversial pet cloning is and that some will criticise them for "playing God". But they insist that they are doing nothing wrong.

"We have helped to make a scientific breakthrough," says Jacques. "Arguably dog breeders are doing something similar but they are doing it for money which we aren't. I can understand the concerns around human cloning — creating beings that don't have a real mum or dad — but the same thing doesn't apply to dogs. When we bring our cloned dogs home they will just be able to enjoy life. I choose not to eat meat because I think it's cruel but I would never judge anyone else who does. I know that some people will disagree with what we've done but I hope they won't judge us."

Jacques is conscious that making the decision to clone Dylan has interrupted the grieving process. "It has postponed my bereavement. I'm not ready to think about Dylan being gone yet. I don't even like to say the word ‘died'. I prefer to say ‘when the really bad thing happened'. I have blanked the phone call telling me Dylan had died, out of my mind. Going for cloning has given us a bit of extra time so that when we do grieve properly at least it won't all be so raw. 

"I know that my grief is still bottled up. I feel like we have cheated in a way. We have had so much stuff to do to prepare for the births of the new puppies that my mind is very occupied. I know that the new dogs will not be Dylan. I think of them as Dylan's puppies. It's very important to me that I'm going to have a piece of Dylan that is genetically identically to him. I would do anything to see his face again."

They accept that some people will say they are mad and wonder why they are spending $100,000 (￡67,000) on the process. "We are not mad," says Remde. "We are dog-mad though, and we both absolutely love all animals."