Western Pa. animal shelters take in beagles rescued from Virginia mass-breeding facility

More than two dozen beagles removed from a Virginia breeding facility last month will wait for their forever homes at six Western Pennsylvania rescue facilities, according to the rescue groups.

Twenty-one of the dogs were brought to the area through a joint effort involving Pittsburgh’s Humane Animal Rescue, Animal Friends, the Beaver and Butler county humane societies and the Washington Area Humane Society in Eighty-Four.

Heart of Glass, which opened earlier this year on Pittsburgh’s South Side, also took in four of the dogs — a male dog they’re calling Charlie and three female dogs named after the lead female characters in the “Charlie’s Angels” films: Dylan, Alex and Natalie.

”They’re all very sensitive and so sweet and they just want love,” said Heart of Glass founder Nicola Hill-Solomon. “They didn’t quite know how to take us at first because we were giving them so much affection, which of course breaks your heart because they’re used to being just another piece of property.”

Hill-Solomon said the beagles are doing well, and the group has received so many adoption applications that it has agreed to take in more beagles rescued from the Virginia facility at the end of the month.

The dogs are among 4,000 ordered to be surrendered from Envigo, a mass-breeding facility in Cumberland, Virginia, that bred the dogs to be sold for research and testing.

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Twenty-one of the beagles made the 350-mile, 6.5-hour trip from Virginia and arrived at the Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh’s North Side facility on Monday, where they were separated into smaller groups to go to the other facilities.

The facilities became involved in the mass rescue after the Humane Society of the United States put out a call for help.

As of Tuesday, about half of the beagles had been removed from the facility, which was ordered to close in early July by the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Humane Society’s Animal Rescue Team started removing beagles on July 21.

“It’s going to take 60 days to get all of these animals out,” Kitty Block, president and CEO of the U.S. Human Society, told CNN Wednesday. “(We are) working with our shelter and rescue partners across the country, working with them to get these dogs into … ever-loving homes.”

The DOJ in May sued the company, alleging extensive and ongoing violations of the Animal Welfare Act. According to the complaint filed against Envigo, the facility had been on notice since July 2021 that its conditions were “far below AWA’s minimum standards.”

“Envigo has employed a paltry number of employees and elected to euthanize beagles or allowed beagles to die from malnutrition, treatable and preventable conditions and injuries resulting from beagles being housed in overcrowded and unsanitary enclosures or enclosures that contain incompatible animals,” federal investigators wrote.

The complaint noted that 300 beagle puppies died in a seven-month span from “unknown causes,” but Envigo did not investigate or diagnose the cause to “spare other beagle puppies from similar deaths.”

As part of a consent decree, Envigo agreed to permanently stop all activity at its Virginia facility as well as relinquish all remaining beagles.