Dissolve-a-dog

This is only half a halfbaked idea but may have applications even so.

Hyaluronidases are quite good at dissolving connective tissue matrix, to the extent that if you fill a bath with warm water, mix a few teaspoonfuls of the stuff in and step in, you will rapidly turn into human soup. There are various immune system and respiratory problems with being in this state.

However, it could be quite useful for dog storage. Suppose your dog is too big or you want two smaller dogs instead of one big one, or is ill in a way which does not fundamentally damage its metabolism. Go down your local pet shop and buy a "dissolve-a-dog" kit consisting of some steriliser, a tank, an aquarium pump and some sachets of Ringer's lactate, sodium chlorate, barium peroxide, hyaluronidase and xenon trioxide.

First, carefully heat the xenon trioxide so it explodes, producing xenon. Anaesthetise the dog. Sterilise everything, then dissolve the Ringer's lactate and hyaluronidase in the tank. Heat the sodium chlorate and pass the gas through barium peroxide to remove the chlorine, then pump the oxygen supply through the tank. Warm the tank to about twenty degrees centigrade or lower - whatever you can get away with. Then, take the dog and immerse it in the solution. It will gradually dissolve, but this will not technically kill it because its cells will survive. This will also induce hypothermia and reduce the dog's requirement for oxygen.

Having dissolved and stored your dog, you can do a number of things. A terminally ill dog is often no longer terminally ill because it's now a soup of cells. Rather than fobbing your kids off with some story about it going to live on a farm in Wales, you can now just say the dog is still alive - you could even send it off to a farm in Wales if you want, and it would actually be true. You could also go on holiday and feed it parenterally, as it were, perhaps with a few flakes of digested dog food. No kennel fees. If you can only afford to buy one guard dog, you could pour the dog solution in a moat around your house and have it defend the whole property. If you want two small dogs or one smaller dog, you could separate the liquids into two or more portions or pour off a bit.

There is just one problem with this. How do you recrystallise your dog? Just that small problem needs to be solved and it'll be fine.

Oh, and this would be much easier to do with insects, using a somewhat different method.