MONROE — Surprisingly after what they’d been through, they were all sleeping or relaxing when they arrived in individual crates, all 10 beagle puppies, perfectly quiet after their road trip south from Dane County Monday, May 11. The dogs, who will ultimately be adopted by eager families here, came from the embattled — and soon to be shuttered — Ridglan Farms breeding facility near Blue Mounds.

The dogs, all males, were among the first of 1,500 Ridglan’s four-legged refugees to leave Dane County for other agencies, such as Green County Humane Society, which already had 10 foster families lined up to take the pups in before they’d even arrived in Monroe.

Police used teargas and pepper spray to repel activists last month trying to take 2,000 beagles to freedom through a protest in Blue Mounds. The owners there ultimately agreed to surrender all but about 500 of the dogs and close operations. Historically, the site bred thousands of dogs for laboratory testing.

The remaining pups are set to be released by the end of the month, according to reports.

“They have probably had it, they are near the end of a very, very long day,” said GCHS Executive Director Erin Emery, as staff and volunteers unloaded the crates of puppies, who would be carefully given some immunizations and a quick check before they were offered the chance — after living most of their lives in captivity — to step into the bright sunshine of a fenced yard, green grass under their paws.

Volunteers lined up in the fenced enclosure to coax them out of their cages, but most were reluctant and not all of the pups were OK with the idea. Exactly half of the dogs came out and played, while others remained dozing away, trying not to make eye contact, looking out the window, or in one case, trying to hide from all of the attention completely.

One of the smallest of the pups was the most spry and eager to make new friends, as he darted from person-to-person and cage-to-cage, sniffing and trotting around, taking it all in.

“It looks like this one is going to be alright,” said one of the volunteers, who help drive the pups to town in a red cargo van.

One by one, the foster families would show up late Monday afternoon to pick up the dogs and, after an as yet undetermined period of recovery, will eventually be adopted in local forever homes. Emery said interest in both fostering and permanent adoption of the beagles locally was immense, especially following all of the national publicity on the protests — and the subject of dogs being used in medical testing and other research generally.

And it’s not the first time GCHS has handled beagles from a research facility.

In the summer of 2022, The Green County Humane Society brought nine beagles to its facility in Monroe as part of a group of beagles removed from another mass-breeding facility riddled with animal welfare concerns.

Meanwhile, elsewhere and related, the Humane Society of the United States is coordinating the removal of approximately 4,000 beagles housed at an Envigo RMS LLC facility in Cumberland, Va. which also bred dogs to be sold to laboratories for animal experimentation. The transfer plan was submitted by the Department of Justice and Envigo RMS LLC.

For the 10 new K9 residents of Green County, the process of healing could be a long one. But Emery said the community has repeatedly shown it is up to the task and has a heart for the work of getting back to living a real dog’s life.

“It will take as long as it takes, it could be three weeks or it could be longer,” she said. “This kind of thing happens one day at a time.”