This poll suggested by Annie’s current thread on shows that make you cry unexpectedly, and Mr. Excellent’s remark early in the thread.
I don’t think we need to bother about spoilers in this discussion, at least not in regards to the episode in question. Poll in a minute or two. Bear in mind that you should make your choice ONLY on the information available to Frye; the epilogue revelation is irrelevant.l
I agree Fry made the best decision he could, based on what he knew. He knew Seymour lived for 12 more years after he was frozen and could only assume someone took good care of him for those 12 years. It would have been selfish of Fry to have him cloned knowing Seymour lived to a ripe old age for a dog.
How would that have been selfish? A clone is just a clone and not the original. Cloning would have been no more selfish than if Fry had gone to the pound and got a new dog.
Selfish? How so?
Dogs have no great philosphical views about the nature of life, or death, or a life well-lived. Dogs are simple - they like being happy. Being Fry’s dog made Seymour happy. One can reasonably assume that Seymour would have been very happy to have another 12 years with Fry.
Further, it’s not as if restoring Seymour to life would consume resources the Planet Express team could not spare - there’s no suggestion that, for example, it’s a choice between bringing back Seymour or condemning Mars to starve.
Even with the limited information Fry had available, he should have known that Seymour would benefit from additional years of being a happy dog. There just isn’t a reasonable argument against that, from Seymour’s perspective. Fry let mawkish and half-thought sentimentality short-change a good doggie. Shame on him for that.
As I said in the other thread - poor Seymour. 
Eh - true in the real world, but I’m not certain this is so in the Futurama universe.
You’re talking real-world dogs, & science, though, not Futurama. I think Frye expected to be (re)creating a Seymour with all the life experience and memories of the one he had known (plus those 12 years after his disappearance).
My understanding is that Futurama/Farnsworth science would have recreated Seymour as an adult. After all, bringing him back as an embryo-turned-puppy would defeat the reason why Fry wanted him back in the first place; he wanted his companion back “as was”.
Fry realizes at the last minute that he’d be bringing back an elderly dog that had twelve years of life experiences past him and had presumably lived a long and full life. I think he made the right choice.
Edit: from the Wiki:
If I remember correctly, Fry’s main concern seemed to be that Seymour probably would have forgotten all about him in 12 years, found another person to bond with, and would be unhappy to be revived in the future because he’d miss that other person too much. I don’t think this is a completely justified inference, but I can see how someone would believe that.
That’s what I based my decision on, that Seymour would have been recreated as be was when be was carbonized; as a 15 year old dog with 15 years’ of memories and 12 years of memories with a different owner. Of course, using the information provided in the episode, and not as retconned in “Bender’s Big Score.” And yes, I believe owners are capable of making decisions about their pet based on selfishness or unselfishness, as in whether to euthanize a dog or extend its life and let it continue to suffer.
Not quite. Fry just says that Seymour would have “forgotten [him] a long time ago.” He never assumes that Seymour would have replaced him with another companion, nor that he would be unhappy in the future for that reason. I think Jophiel’s interpretation is correct: Fry feels that Seymour must have lived a long and fulfilling life, and chooses not to revive him because he doesn’t want to sully that. It’s not about Seymour, really. It’s about Fry realizing that if the dog (presumably) moved on, so should he.
The tragedy is that, of course, Seymour never moved on at all.