The Beagles: Live At Cubbon Park

Make No Bones

• Beagles were rescued in batches late last year and early this year from pharma labs where they were being used for animal testing
• Many of them were sent to Bangalore animal welfare centre CUPA to be put up for adoption
• The beagles were neutered and sterilised, and health papers drawn up
• Bangaloreans lined up to adopt the beagles, most of them aged 4-12
• Some batches of the resc­ued dogs were found to be in terrible physical/mental shape, some had heart cond­itions, skin/eye infections, vocal chords snipped off, unable to climb stairs or walk well, terrified of sounds and, in some cases, wary of men

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Sasha, baker Chinthana Gopinath’s 4-year-old, baby-faced beagle soulmate, is afraid of men, young men in particular. “It probably reminds her of the time she was caged in a pharma lab for testing,” says Chinthana. But that isn’t all Sasha suffers from—she can’t bark either, or make sounds of any kind. 

“A month after Sasha came home, her ball got stuck under a chair. She started barking her head off, but there was no sound. When I took her to the vet, they told me her vocal chords had been snipped off. It’s apparently a common practice in labs to keep the more spri­ghtly dogs quiet,” relates Chinthana.

Sasha was one of the 102 beagles rescued from a lab in Bangalore by People For Animals earlier this year and put up for adoption in March by the city’s animal welfare centre cupa (Compassion Unlimited Plus Action). Last November, PETA (Peo­ple for the Ethi­cal Treatment of Animals) and pfa had led a couple of other rescue operations at pharma labs where a large number of beagles were found caged in horrific conditions. And then emerged the silver lining in this otherwise depressing tale: once word spread that these battered beagles needed homes, hundreds of Bangaloreans spontaneou­sly came forward to adopt them. Ind­eed, of the 102 beagles from the latest rescue, just seven still await a home. “For our first adoption drive of 30 beagles, we got around 200 responses via e-mail. It was a lot easier to re-home the younger beagles. As the age groups got older, the response was less enthusiastic. We got a lot of queries from Hyderabad, Chennai, Mysore, Mang­alore, even from different parts of Kerala but given the history of these dogs we preferred to send them in and around Bangalore, in case they were not able to adjust and had to be brought back to us,” says cupa member Sanjana Madappa, who coordinated and handled the adoptions. So far, only one dog has been returned to the camp.

Of those who have found happy homes, Jack and Jim, aged 10 and 8, now live with Bangalore-based brand manager Lakshmi Rammohan. “I saw posts on Facebook about a batch of beagles who needed homes last year. So I visited a foster home where I met two male beagles (they were fostered in pairs). I had never seen dogs like that in my whole life, even though I’ve had many dogs at home before. They gave off a strong chemical body odour, had secretions from their eyes, walked in repetitive circles, trampled all over their pee and poop...even ate where they peed and pooped. Most of all, they were terrified,” she remembers. While Jim had an enlarged heart condition and conjunctivitis, with serious teeth and gum infection, Jack came with severe spondilitis and growth around his ears and neck. “It took me some time to figure out how to deal with them. If I even clapped or laughed loudly, they would get scared,” says Rammohan. Encou­raged by how Jack and Jim have coped since then, she adopted another dog from a later batch, a miniature beagle she has named Bailey.

Ever since the beagles livened up her home, Rammohan’s life has changed: she has a virtual pharmacy at home to deal with their severe medical issues, and regular visits to the vet are now part of her routine. But, she insists, her days have never been so happily full.

“They bounce back a lot faster than you give them credit for,” says Chin­thana, who sought advice on online forums to figure out how to get Sasha to take the stairs down. When the techniques she was offered worked, she shared the milestone, with pictures, on Beagle Brigade, a recent group she sta­rted with others on Facebook for families that have adop­ted/fostered the beagles. For many of them, it’s a first time, enc­ountering rescued dogs. Indeed, the experience can be a bit nerve-racking. Like for Sanke­erthi Aip­anjiguly, a stylist and costume designer whose beagle friend Cleo has run away from home four times in the last two months (the vets feel it’s most likely she is still in the habit of trying to ‘esc­ape’). The first time she ran away, she was missing for 12 hours. She was finally found in a classroom in a nei­ghbouring school. “Another time, I had to run after her on the main road. It’s been stressful, so sharing stories about how our beagles are getting on rea­lly helps. Yet, one realises that each one of them is different. Cleo, who is four, was one of the most difficult dogs at the adoption camp. She doesn’t get along with other dogs or people, but has finally started responding to me, and now follows me like a shadow. But she’s still scared of my husband, and avoids confrontations with my other dog, a dachshund,” says Sankeerthi. 

At Rajani Santhosh’s home, meanwhile, her eight-year-old twins have learnt to not expect the new six-year-old member of the family, Champ, to be all cuddly or playful like other pets. “Champ’s special. He chose us, not the other way around. At the adoption centre, he started loitering around my son, so we took him home. But he’s still terrified, he jumps up at the drop of a pin. For the first 15 days, he refused to go out for walks. It took him two months to figure out that the walks were meant for him to do his business,” says Rajani.

Rehabilitating lab rescues isn’t for everyone, as Bangalore-based canine behaviour therapist Natasha Chandy puts it: “Even something as basic as potty training can be challenging and have many layers to it.” For example, even as Sankeerthi finds Cleo warming up to her, last week when she rubbed a dose of tick powder on her, she peed and stayed away from her for the next few days. “Perhaps it reminded her of something that happened in the lab,” says Sankeerthi. “They typically have inhibitions to being outdoors, eating regular food and being around people,” points out Chandy, emphasising that despite the innumerable challenges, it was heartwarming to see the number of people offering to provide homes to the rescued animals. Indeed, there seems to be something of a support system falling into place, the new ‘parents’ are reaching out to each other on social media, through blogs and other online forums. “We’re all drafting complaint letters to Advinus pharma lab, from where the beagles were rescued,” says Chinthana, who’s helping Sasha work her way around being mute. “I’ve had to take a step back and be patient. She’s adapting by finding other ways to communicate, by nudging me, or running around me when she wants to eat and play.”

The trick with being good parents, find Nimmi Sebastian and Rahul Tho­mas—whose six-year-old Maggie is still shy around people but coping well—is to set your expectation levels low. It’s natural for them to have major behavioural iss­ues, even be prone to infections. “Maggie was just a number once, 1582, but now she has a name, a home. It took a couple of weeks for her to settle in, and finally she’s learnt to wag her tail,” says Nimmi. The others, well, they are just loving their new-found spot in the sun.