Pet Cryonics

On the other hand it also seems like a rather human and heart warming practice. Is pet cryopreservation good for the image of cryonics?

Heartwarming only to people who already like the idea of cryonics, I'm guessing. To those who don't, the interpretation will probably be "selfish rich weirdos getting their dead pets frozen", which will be used circularly as further evidence that cryonics is weird and bad.

Sorry to hear about your dog.

Those of us interested in pet cryonics might also be interested in donating to the Singularity Institute for Dogs and Cats. (Richard Hollerith, founder and Research Fellow).

One might worry about the pet getting revived without the owner. I think pets have a better chance of revival than humans. Pets can be euthanized and cryopreserved. Humans have to wait around until they die "naturally." Pets are smaller than humans, so they can be perfused and cooled faster. Pet brains are simpler than human brains, so it's probably easier to extrapolate behavior from incomplete data (damaged brain).

Even for pets, I think post-revival existence would be better than death. I don't have any pets and I wouldn't devote resources to cryopreserving them if I did, but I can understand why someone would do it.

I was wondering if you had an update on your situation? My dog Mothi is about to die.

One reason to cryopreserve a pet is as a backup for some information about yourself, similar to lifelogging. It could help future AI to restore your lost neural connections with higher accuracy. Pets have access to information that cameras and audio recorders wouldn't, such as smells.

Is pet cryopreservation good for the image of cryonics?

If Katja is correct that cryonics is far and far is actually meaningful then almost certainly not.

Will people upload pets? Assuming life as an emulation feels different from life as a biological organism is it ethical to upload animals? The transition might be strange and uncomfortable but we expect at least some humans to take the risk and live with any differences. But animals don't understand this and might not have the mental flexibility to adjust.

If one is worried about this one could presumably keep them in a simulated environment very close to the real world. But animals may have a lot of flexibility in this regards. Look for example at dogs who learn to walk after their back legs have been amputated and replaced with wheels. Or dogs who learn to walk on three legs after one is amputated. Or at cats that manage to hunt when nearly blind.

Cryonic revival experiments will first be done on animals (hasn't it been done with a mouse already?) because they're more expendable. Once it gets to the point of freezing and reviving a dog without apparent ill effects (in near/far terms, when cryonics gets near), then it might be a useful publicity stunt for a scientist to freeze and revive his pet dog. For added impact, a dog in need of a kidney transplant but which needs to wait longer for a suitable kidney than it can survive without one, thus demonstrating the prime motivation for cryonic suspension: an ambulance ride into the future.