The Dogs Were Rescued (And So Was I) (16 page)

Percival’s presence had an immediate impact on my life.

I’d been flirting with veganism, but I had not fully committed. I’d started following farm sanctuary and animal rescue groups on Facebook and Twitter, and received several newsletters and even a magazine or two on the vegan lifestyle, but mostly I focused on the plant-based diet aspect. There was no denying a vegan lifestyle made sense for me—it aligned with my belief in myself as an animal lover, and it aligned with my tastes. And frankly I was tired of people mocking my food by pointing out my leather shoes (as though my not changing in one area is reason for them not to make any change at all). But to be honest, I feared people would think I was too weird. And I thought it would be too hard (as though that is an excuse). Now, though, with Percival here in front of me, and Daphne with all she’d suffered through at the hands of humans, I knew it was time.

Vegan isn’t just about the food, and I didn’t want to be just about the food. Vegan is a lifestyle of compassion. A lifestyle that respects
all
animals. How could that be weird? Just as I’d gone to a plant-based diet “cold tofu,” I vowed to now go all-in vegan. I
needed
to be vegan. My days pretending to be an animal lover while contributing to their wretched lives and early deaths were over. I just hoped there was such a thing as a haute hippie.

The easiest and most obvious place for me to start was to eliminate products tested on animals.

Well, I
thought
that much would be easy.

I’d vaguely known “they test on animals,” and of course, listening to Shannon and getting to know Beagle Freedom Project and their work, I now also understood “they test on beagles.” But I didn’t really understand what that meant.

I was acutely aware of why “they” test on beagles. Beagles are very compliant dogs; I knew that firsthand. I could see how their personalities would lead these scientists to choose this breed on which to conduct their experiments, and the realization pained me. Seamus, who unfortunately had been a patient of way too many doctors, had his issues, but veterinarians were universally complimentary of what a great patient he was, of how easily he tolerated whatever needed to be done. And a lot had needed to be done to him. He was a perfect example, in that regard, of the beagle personality. I thought too of Daphne so happily licking the face of the veterinarian she’d just met, and the two strangers who’d rescued her from the shelter. She was happy and comfortable with all of them, though she couldn’t have known how much better they were going to make her life. She simply, instinctively, trusted. And Percival! Sweet Percival, free from a lab only four months and yet willing to be picked up, held, petted by a human. By several humans!

So yes, I understood (though vehemently disagreed with) the “why beagles” part, but now, as I prepared for another major lifestyle change, and as I calmed Percival’s night terrors, I had to wonder, who are “they” and what are they testing?

I knew from my talks with Shannon at Beagle Freedom Project that we’d never learn specifically what testing had been done on Percival. Beagle Freedom Project rescues the dogs legally, in collaboration with the laboratories. Frequently it’s the lab technicians, the ones who care for the dogs and, it seems, come to know them as the loving creatures they are, who reach out to find help for the animals when they know a particular experiment is ending and the otherwise healthy dogs will be euthanized if rescue cannot be arranged. The negotiations between BFP and the labs always include a nondisclosure agreement, at the insistence of the labs. I would never know the name of the lab, let alone the experiments done on Percival. One of the other beagles rescued by BFP was later discovered to have wires running throughout his little body. They had no idea why and never would.

How best to care for these dogs if we don’t know what was done? Why did Percival drool and freeze into a trancelike state in a car? Why did the trash can on wheels frighten him so? Why did he stick his paw out so frequently, even sitting with his front leg bent, almost but not quite offering his paw? If I learned about animal testing, I could learn how best to help Percival and I’d learn the numerous reasons I needed to eliminate these products from my life.

I spoke again with Shannon and others active in BFP, gathering as much information as I could. And then I asked Chris to set up the DVD player so when I was ready, all I’d have to do was push Play and I could watch the documentary
Maximum
Tolerated
Dose
.

“Seriously? More documentaries? Are you sure?” he said.

“No. That’s why I just want you to set it up. I’ll figure out a good time to fall apart watching it.”

“Great. I look forward to that.”

Chris took Daphne the next morning, and I stayed home with Percival, ostensibly to work. And I did get a bit of legal work done. But the Play button was calling me. And never was there a more inappropriate term for a button than that one in that moment. There was nothing playful about what happened next.

I held Percival by my side while I listened to the cardiologist, the biologist, and the former lab worker each describe what they did in their past lives, subjecting animals to cruel and inhumane testing. As the doctor described, they’d all been trained in classic western medicine and taught to believe this was necessary—scientifically appropriate, if not ethically. They all quit when they learned that the tests were neither scientifically appropriate nor ethical. I watched the footage of the heavily secured, windowless compound where the research was done. I saw the restraining equipment, the frightened, huddled animals, the steel cages. I wept at the scenes of baby monkeys stolen from their mothers, their arms twisted behind their backs as they were dumped in net bags and shoved into holds at the bottom of the Laotian boats. I listened to the description of the tests: a mouse restrained, unable to turn or scratch, so mosquitoes could feed on her all night long; dogs injected with radioactive material, their hearts cut out and dissected; rats used in a college nutrition study for twelve weeks, then killed only to have the same study conducted again and again, year after year, yielding precisely the same results—and death. Over and over again there was death.

And then the beagles came on the screen. Percival had earlier gotten bored and left my lap for the comfort of the sunshine in our courtyard. I realize a dog doesn’t watch television and wouldn’t comprehend, but still, I was glad he wasn’t in the room to see the screen.

The narrator, an undercover investigator, described a compound of fifteen hundred beagles at any one time, the dogs having been “brought into the world to be used as scientific resources.” I looked outside at my own “scientific resource,” asleep on a chaise, soaking up the sun and fresh air. The screen turned to footage of beagles—adorable, tricolored, healthy-looking young beagles—huddled together in the corner of a cage down a dark hallway in a facility that looked no cleaner, no happier, and no more “humane” than the poorest municipal animal “shelter” that regularly euthanized thousands of dogs a year, as indeed this facility did too. The cages were barren but for these soulful dogs. Then the film focused on one beagle, her midsection bandaged, a cone around her head, her sad round eyes staring up at the camera, looking a lot like Daphne had in her kennel photo, but without the hope.

She was killed the next day. Along with the other dogs, who’d spent thirty days in a test and were no longer needed.

Chris came home from work to find me under the kitchen sink pulling out every cleaning product and dishwashing liquid we had. (Never mind why we had four bottles of dishwashing liquid; that is not the point!) I spread the products out on the counter, out of a curious beagle’s reach and next to my iPad, with the screen showing the website for LeapingBunny.org. Through Beagle Freedom Project’s website, I’d found the Leaping Bunny website, and then I found their lists of certified cruelty-free products. I didn’t recognize too many of the names, which is what caused me to dive under our kitchen sink to begin to check labels.

“Are you actually cleaning?” Chris said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Thought I’d walked into the wrong house for a moment.”

“Well, I’m sort of cleaning. I’m cleaning
out
things.”

Chris picked up a bottle of a very common household cleaning spray. “Cleaning out cleaning?”

“Something like that. I’m getting rid of everything that was tested on animals.”

He raised his eyebrows. “All of this?”

“I’m still checking, but so far, I haven’t found a single product here that
isn’t
tested on animals.”

“It’s going to be kind of expensive to replace, isn’t it?”

“It will be cheaper than the therapy I will need if I continue to use products from companies that are torturing and killing animals.” I dived back under the sink. “Everything! I swear to God, everything in our house is tested on animals.”

“Why would they test oven cleaner on a dog?”

I came back out from under the sink, window cleaner in hand. “It’s how they learn what would happen if you swallow oven cleaner. As though we don’t already know that. So they force the dogs to ingest it in a process known as oral gavage to figure out maximum tolerated dose.”

“In case some moron doesn’t know not to drink oven cleaner or keep it somewhere so their kid doesn’t drink it?”

“Exactly. Or shampoo, bleach, laundry detergent, soap, you name it. It’s all so stupid and unnecessary. It’s not even required by law. It’s done out of habit—ease—laziness on the part of the labs and scientists who even get grant money—our freakin’ tax dollars—for this kind of crap. And many of the animals die, of course. That’s how we learn the ‘maximum.’ And sometimes they do the procedure wrong and the liquid gets into the animal’s—
the
beagle’s
—lungs and they kill the poor dog. I mean, they call it ‘euthanize’ but that’s not euthanasia!” I was flinging my arms in the air, still holding the window cleaner, and Chris was exaggeratedly, slowly backing away from me in mock horror. Or maybe it was real. “That’s torture and killing. And I’m not going to participate in it anymore. Not to mention this shit is all toxic anyway. I should have thrown it all out long ago.”

“Well, it’s not like we were using it.”

I looked over at him and saw he was smiling, a hopeful, teasing twinkle in his eye. Once again he was trying to back me off from the cliff he and I both knew I was running toward. This time it worked. I was exhausted and emotionally spent, but I could not argue the point that neither of us was exactly fastidious about a clean house. We had a housekeeper, and sometimes that was the only way we were able to find our sink and countertops.

“Well, now we definitely won’t be using it.” I threw the window cleaner into the trash bag. “Remember when I said I was going to a plant-based diet and you asked if I meant vegan?”

“Vaguely.”

“I mean vegan now.”

Chris moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine. “I’ll just leave you be.”

“Good idea.”

In the morning, I woke early and with the same resolve. I went back online, this time to determine whether my cosmetic products were tested on animals.
All
of them were tested on animals. My foundation, my mascara, lipstick, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, deodorant…
all
of them. I was appalled. I now knew they weren’t testing the products by lengthening the beagles’ lashes and making sure they smelled pretty. Percival, like Seamus before him and so many other beagles, had gorgeously black-lined eyes that made him look like he was wearing heavy eyeliner, but that hadn’t been drawn on him in a lab as some sort of “test.” That’s not what they were doing. The beagles were either ingesting it or inhaling the chemicals. And dogs don’t even sweat, so how and why are they testing deodorant on a dog?
Were
they
even
making
these
poor
dogs
ingest
deodorant?

The site listed “cruelty-free” companies, and as I searched those to find the products I should be buying, it struck me as ridiculous that a company had to note and proudly proclaim “cruelty-free.” “Cruelty-free” was worth noting, because “cruelty” was the norm? Like “low-fat” was worth noting because “fat” is the norm in our foods. Suddenly, it all seemed so very backward.

I not only felt like a hypocrite; I also felt duped. How did I not know this? How did this become our acceptable norm? I thought I was a compassionate person, particularly when it came to animals. Yet, here I’d been spending thousands of dollars on one beagle—my beagle—and I remained oblivious to the thousands of beagles being tested on every year for the duration of their short lives. I had not only failed to realize this, but also I was using the very products tested on these poor dogs.

I grabbed another trash bag.

But throwing out the cosmetics proved more difficult than the cleaning products had been. I’d not become attached to my laundry detergent in the same way I loved my hair care products. I’d not spent as long searching for the perfect window cleaner (I’d spent no time at all) as I had my favorite shade of lipstick. But shiny hair and luscious lavender lips were not worth animal’s lives. My vanity would have to get over it. Over time, I’m sure I could find the right shade of blood-red lipstick that didn’t involve actual blood. Which gave me another thought—shouldn’t they have to give the products realistic names? Would anyone buy “Beagle Blood Red” or “Pink Bunny Death” lipstick? I
had
bought them—just packaged under misleading and phony names, with no disclosure of the suffering that went into each tube.

But now they were all going in the trash, and I even tried to note and separate which products were in recyclable containers and disposed of those accordingly.

On another website, I ordered cruelty-free makeup, a lip gloss, and some herbal supplements for the beagles. I put my anger to work.