Raleigh rescue gets 79 beagles from Va. facility

Nearly 80 newly arrived beagles in the Triangle will soon need new homes.

Triangle Beagle Rescue of North Carolina, based in Raleigh, welcomed the 79 beagles Tuesday, doubling the group’s dogs in a day.

Twenty-five of the dogs are puppies, according to the group, also known as TriBeagles.

It announced the rescue of the new beagles in a Facebook post.

As of Thursday morning, the group had raised over $7,190 in donations from over 140 people to care for the dogs.

The beagles came from Envigo, a breeding facility in Cumberland, where 4,000 dogs were rescued. Envigo was closed for violations of the Animal Welfare Act for selling beagles to laboratories for scientific testing, according to animal advocates.

None of the rescued dogs was sold for testing, according to Leann Tenbusch with TriBeagles.

The Humane Society of the United States is coordinating the transport of the beagles to shelters, Tenbusch said. The dogs are in foster homes until they are ready for adoption. While there, they can get medical care, rehab, and decompress.

“They’re lovely dogs, they are in good shape. They’re just confused,” Tenbusch said. “They’ve only lived on cement and they don’t know what grass is; they don’t know what a bed is. They don’t know what trees are. So they’re learning how to dog.”

Some of the dogs already are wagging their trails, Tenbusch said. She commended the community response to a July 23 Facebook post looking for volunteers. Typically the group gets about two applications for fosters a week, after the post, they got 200, Tenbusch said.

“We’re all volunteers, we’re not paid so we learned some stuff,” she said. “Anytime I’ve asked for collars, harnesses, the community has sent whatever we asked for.”

TriBeagles said it hopes to get more dogs after the first 79 are adopted. Most foster homes are in the Triangle area to be close to area veterinarians. The dogs still need to be spayed and neutered, Tenbusch said. Within about two weeks, most will be ready for adoption. The puppies, which are only a few weeks old, will take longer.

COURTESY PHOTO Beagles from the Envigo breeding facility stretch their legs after they were transported to a rescue in Northern Virginia this month. Nearly 80 of the roughly 4,000 beagles taken from the Envigo facility arrived Tuesday in Raleigh.