Beagles break hearts in Ozaukee

Angela Speed heard nothing.

The five beagles in the back of her van were silent during last week’s trip from the Milwaukee campus of the Wisconsin Humane Society to its Ozaukee County campus in Saukville.

The society’s vice president of marketing and communications said she nearly became emotional.

“We all have our moments,” Speed said. “I’ve been dreaming about them.”

In their crates at the Saukville campus, the dogs had blankets, toys, food and water. They were cautiously eager for human interaction but would often back away in fear.

The dogs are from Mount Horeb’s Ridglan Farms, a biomedical research facility that had about two thousand beagles that people have been trying to rescue.

Ridglan’s business model, Speed said, has been sunsetting for 60 years.

“The public has clearly expressed concern,” Speed said.

Big Dog Ranch Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy bought 1,500 of the dogs for an undisclosed price, leaving about 500.

The Wisconsin Humane Society took 130 of them. When its Milwaukee campus ran out of room and fosters for its share, five females came to Ozaukee.

The staff named them after bagels. The dogs’ only identification had been through tattoos on the inside of their ears.

Speed has been part of similar rescues, including from a Wisconsin puppy mill and a beagle breeding facility in Virginia, as well as hoarding cases.

“This is not our first rodeo,” she said.

The organization went through its usual adoption process with the beagles, making the dogs available once they were cleared by the veterinary and behavioral team.

They’re already gone. Three were adopted last Friday, including one by a family from Willoughby, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. The couple arrived around 9 a.m. and waited until adoptions opened at 1 p.m.

The other two were adopted on Saturday by families from Milwaukee and Round Lake, Ill.

“They’ve got a journey ahead of them, but even in the first couple days at the shelter we saw improvement in their behavior, from cowering in the corner to coming right up to the front of the kennel with tail wags, wanting pets,” Speed said.

Lines formed to adopt the dogs at multiple facilities.

“The response from the community has been wild,” Speed said.

Families, however, must adjust to their latest additions. Some dogs don’t know how to eat out of a bowl.

“Some are hunkering down in a corner in the living room and will only eat when you leave the room,” Speed said. “Patience is key.”

Another upside to saving the beagles, she said, is the increased interest in adoption and fostering. For those who didn’t get the beagles, “There’s somebody else in the queue,” Speed said.

“That’s why foster families are so important. Buildings have finite space. Foster families expand that space.”

For more information on adopting or fostering, visit the society’s website at www.wihumane.org.