Video: Beagle From Local Dog Factory Too ‘Wiggly’ for Experiments Finds Loving Home

For Immediate Release:
July 28, 2025

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Life started out bleak for Temple, one of the many beagles born every year at Dane County breeding facility Ridglan Farms, Inc.—the nation’s second-largest breeder of dogs for experimentation, where approximately 2,500 dogs are confined. But as a new PETA video shows, Temple has a new leash on life after PETA’s six-month investigation into a squalid drug-testing laboratory in Colorado led to her rescue and adoption into a loving home.

After being sold by Ridglan Farms in 2023 to Red Beast Enterprises—also known as High Quality Research—Temple languished for two years in a barren concrete pen and windowless cell 24/7. The laboratory’s veterinarian cut her vocal cords—as well as those of other dogs—to make their cries less “shrill.” But during PETA’s investigation, the laboratory’s president deemed Temple too “wiggly and jumpy” to experiment on and agreed to release her to PETA’s investigator.

PETA staff members flew to Colorado and drove Temple—who had never set paw outdoors before—35 hours through a severe winter storm back to PETA’s shelter in Norfolk, Virginia. There, one of the drivers and her husband, a fellow PETA staff member, happily adopted Temple, naming her in honor of Dr. Temple Grandin, the world-renowned animal welfare expert. As the video reveals, for the first time in her life, Temple now has a soft, warm bed to sleep on, a dog friend and toys to play with, walks on the beach to enjoy, and a family to snuggle.

“Temple has found her happy ending in a safe and loving home, but thousands of other animals just like her continue to suffer in hideous laboratory breeding mills and at the hands of experimenters,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is calling on researchers to stop propping up disgraceful operations like Ridglan Farms and replace flawed experiments on animals with superior, human-relevant methods—and PETA’s scientists stand ready to help.”

Ridglan Farms is under criminal investigation for alleged violations of Wisconsin’s cruelty to animals laws. Workers at Ridglan Farms have cut off dogs’ swollen eyelid glands—known as “cherry eye”—with scissors and cut their vocal cords without providing any pain relief, and left them in ammonia-ridden rooms and barren cages filled with feces, according to court documents and witness testimony.

As a result of PETA’s investigation, Red Beast Enterprises was cited for more than 200 alleged violations of 11 federal animal welfare regulations, but nearly 150 kittens, cats, and dogs are still suffering at the laboratory, where Colorado State University faculty members have conducted experiments. PETA is rallying its members and supporters to help spare more animals the suffering that Temple endured by contacting Colorado State University and urging it to reconsider its faculty’s use of the laboratory, while PETA scientists have released Research Modernization Now—a comprehensive strategy for ending failed experiments on animals and transitioning to state-of-the-art, non-animal methods that are more likely to lead to treatments for humans.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.