GFP Beagles: Disease model or designer pet?

A recent paper in the journal genesis describes the production of transgenic beagles that glow when exposed to UV light (abstract).  The eGFP transgene was introduced into a beagle embryo using a similar (but much improved) technique that was used to clone Dolly the sheep.  Making a puppy that glows is not really new, as it has been demonstrated by the same group in 2009 (abstract) and others (in dogs, as well as other small mammals) but there are two cool things about the recent work.  First of all, they put the transgene under a promotor.  This means that the puppy does not glow green until the gene gets switched on, in this case by the drug doxycycline.  Feeding the dog low levels of doxycycline induced the expression of the GFP protein (green glow) and the effect could be turned off simply by removing the drug from the dog's diet.  This is pretty easy to do in small animals (like rats and mice) but pretty complicated in large animals. 

  In a separate article, also in genesis, they report the transmission of the transgene to offspring (abstract).  This was also interesting, as the GFP-containing females were totally fertile and had normal pregnancies and births.  The dads were wild type beagles so roughly 50% of the offspring carried the transgene.  This is consistent with stable germline transmission.  This result suggests that we are really not far off from having designer dogs.  The initial cloning will be hard (efficiency is still in the 1-5% range) but if the transgene is stable, simple breeding techniques should be enough to make zillions of glowing puppies!  Although this is a crude example, one can envision a vastly different world where hair color, facial and body features, and perhaps even personality traits could be engineered.  Genetic defects and disease determinants could be engineered out.  One could build the perfect dog.  You did realize I was still talking about dogs... right?