Melanie Kaplan: Lab Dog

"Maybe when we started doing this with animals, researching on them and studying them for human benefit hundreds of years ago, we didn't know about their sentience. We didn't know that they had emotions and feelings and felt pain. And we know all that now. We can't ignore that." – Melanie Kaplan

When journalist Melanie Kaplan agreed to foster a beagle named Hammy, she knew he'd just been released from a research lab. What she didn't know was how profoundly his story — and the world he came from — would change her own.

In her new book, Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research, Melanie takes readers deep inside the hidden world of animal testing — one that quietly breeds and experiments on tens of thousands of dogs each year, mostly beagles, chosen for their size and gentle nature. Through her journey with Hammy, she unravels how these animals end up in labs, what happens to them there, and what it takes to help them heal once they're free.

Our conversation explores the long and often secretive history of animal testing in the U.S., the shocking revelations behind the Envigo case — where 4,000 beagles were rescued from a breeding facility in Virginia — and the growing movement toward humane, non-animal alternatives.

Links:

Melanie Kaplan: https://melaniedgkaplan.com/index.html

Lab Dog: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/melanie-d-g-kaplan/lab-dog/9781541604988/