Free the beagles!
My first dog as a new parent was a beagle named Letta – named for the South African singer Letta Mbulu. She – the dog – was perfect for small children. She was also a perfect companion. I was at the University of Florida and we rented a house with a fenced in backyard to keep the alligators out that lived in the creek running behind the house. We concluded that alligators must really like dogs because it seemed that most every time Letta was in the back, that an alligator would come and sun itself up against the fence.
I guess the most famous beagle is Snoopy, inspired by a dog from Charles Schulz’ childhood. His Snoopy is anthropomorphic portrayed as the opposite of his owner, Charlie Brown. In reality, beagles are loving, sweet and gentle which may explain why so many are bred for medical experiments. Now I am no PETA person – although some say that stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. I know the value of conducting life saving research on laboratory animals (rather than humans). But beagles? By some estimates over 70,000 are bred only for medical purposes. These dogs never can show their love to a family with young kids. They will never hunt rabbits – my grandfather had a bunch of them solely for that purpose. They will never experience human kindness and reciprocate it.
Well just recently a court case made the news. It concerned the theft of 22 beagles from a kennel that breeds them for medical research. Wayne Hsiung a Californian went into the Ridglan Farms facility in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin and liberated the dogs. He recorded the heist on video to tell the world what he was doing. Laura Trump, Lara Loomer, congressmen Nancy Mace and Young Kim voiced their support for him. Loomer tweeted to her 1.9 million followers: “Terrible! Save the dogs!”In 2025, following a petition by Hsiung a judge found probable cause that Ridglan had broken Wisconsin anticruelty laws, including conducting certain medical procedures without anesthesia and failing to provide adequate sanitation and ventilation.
Ridglan, which denied wrongdoing, offered a deal: it would close its breeding operation, keeping only its smaller testing operation open, in exchange for avoiding charges. Lara Trump urged Ridglan in an Instagram video to accept a $1 million offer from animal-rights groups to rehome all 2,000 dogs. Big Ranch Dog Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy reached a deal to rehome the dogs for an undisclosed sum. There are videos of the dogs being released and some people adopting them. One particularly poignant scene is one in which one beagle raises her paw as if to shake hands with her new owner. It turns out that the dog thought that she was supposed to be giving blood.
You can read the full story here https://www.wsj.com/us-news/the-fight-to-free-hundreds-of-beagles-from-a-rural-wisconsin-research-lab-3c3a49ff
Here is a recent paper on the use of beagles in medical research: “Beagles in Biomedical Research: Scientific Justification, Biosafety Protocols, Ethical Debates, and Emerging Alternatives.” https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1709256.pdf
haroldblackphd.com 