How the tactic of ‘open rescue’ came to Wisconsin

The grassroots effort to free the beagles at Ridglan Farms goes back 10 years

by

Opinion

In March 2026, dozens of activists entered Ridglan Farms and carried 23 beagles out into the sunlight. A much larger group plans to return on April 19 for those who remain.

The recent actions at Ridglan, a dog breeding and research facility in Blue Mounds, might look like a sudden eruption of radical action. But that’s not how grassroots activism works. The Ridglan Farms campaign is the culmination of a decade of unglamorous work: door-knocking, petition-filing, letter-writing, and networking by ordinary Wisconsinites who refused to accept that the system would never deliver justice for Ridglan’s dogs. 

Late in the summer of 2017, a group of activists gathered in my living room and took turns answering a question about fighting for animal rights: “What would success look like to you?” One said he wanted to expose the dairy industry in Wisconsin. A second wanted to investigate and hold vigils outside local slaughterhouses. Rebekah Robinson was there that day, and she recalls a third answer that would change her life forever: “One woman said she wanted to shut down Ridglan Farms, and she explained that it was a massive puppy mill, breeding thousands of puppies for experimentation each year, about 30 miles away. I was horrified.”

At the time I was two years into my studies as a doctoral student in UW-Madison’s philosophy department. I was also a new volunteer with the Alliance for Animals: tabling for them at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, helping organize the then-annual vegan fest and vegan chili cookoff, and eventually assuming leadership of the Animals in Research Committee. The committee’s purpose was to fight against all harmful and nontherapeutic animal experimentation, and, thanks in part to groundbreaking prior work by Jeremy Beckham of the Beagle Freedom Project, Ridglan Farms was a chief target.

The more I learned, the more convinced I became that the moral atrocities routinely committed within Ridglan’s walls needed to end. I was particularly struck by a 2016 study in which a beagle, who had spent her nine years of life being repeatedly bred, was sold to researchers who cut her open, mutilated her shoulder by “creating an injury to the shoulder joint capsule,” studied her recovery, and then killed her. In late April 2016, I drove to the facility myself with a small group of activists and led a vigil just beyond its property line. The apparent gentleness of this event belied its radical intent. At one point, we all closed our eyes and reflected on how each of us would play a role in helping ensure that suffering inside Ridglan Farms would no longer be hidden.

Around that time, I learned of a Berkeley, California-based organization called Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) that specialized in the tactic of open rescue: entering places of animal exploitation, rescuing sick and injured animals, and then sharing their stories with the world. The rescuers openly shared their identities, and they believed their rescues were legal under the same theory that breaking a dog out of a closed car on a hot summer day is legal.

I thought that DxE’s bold tactics might be necessary to save Ridglan’s dogs from their lives of torment, but I had no contacts in the organization. Luckily, I was invited to a New Year’s Eve party hosted by DxE activists in Chicago. Heather Zinninger and I attended that party and successfully networked our way to the person there who had the closest connection to DxE’s Berkeley headquarters. That person turned out to be Eva Hamer, who has since become one of my closest friends.

While I thought that it would be prohibitively difficult for activists to actually enter a facility like Ridglan and rescue dogs, Eva was more optimistic. She was interested enough to invite me to come back to Chicago a month later to see DxE’s founder, Wayne Hsiung. I was inspired by Wayne’s theory of social change and deep knowledge of diverse social movements, and Wayne was intrigued by Ridglan Farms.

A few weeks later, Wayne invited me to have a private conversation about Ridglan Farms. At that time, Ridglan’s location was not as publicly available as it is today, but, thanks to my work with the Alliance for Animals, I was able to share where to find the facility. By the next time we spoke, activists from DxE had completed the 2017 open rescue mission at Ridglan that liberated three beagles. That action led to felony charges against Wayne, Eva and another activist named Paul Darwin Picklesimer. The charges were dropped after Ridglan indicated it no longer wanted the case to proceed to trial.

Wayne invited me to attend the DxE Forum in Berkeley that summer to give a talk about anti-vivisection activism, and that’s where I saw the rescued beagles for myself. It was the first time in my life that I genuinely believed that the complete liberation of Ridglan’s dogs was possible.

Once back in Madison, I got to work organizing a local team to amplify the impact of DxE’s open rescue. By that point, I was doing grassroots organizing within a newly formed collective called Friends of Animal Liberation (FOAL), which counted Rebekah Robinson as a member. Some of us compiled every recent scientific paper referencing Ridglan and sent DxE a summary document illuminating the suffering endured by its dogs after they were sold to researchers. Others strategized about local media coverage.

I was impressed by Rebekah’s background in political science, dog training, and the military and thought that she would be the ideal person to lead a local legislative effort to shut down Ridglan Farms. I asked her if she would take on this challenge. Neither of us was optimistic that a legislative effort would succeed, at least not right away, but that was not the point. Instead, we aimed to ignite conversations about dog experimentation that would contribute to Ridglan’s ultimate demise. Soon after, I revealed to Rebekah that an open rescue had taken place.

Rebekah was and is an animal rights activist committed to the liberation of all animals rather than just dogs and cats. But she was also savvy: “I knew that a direct action, animal liberation message would never fly in Wisconsin,” she says. “I knew there weren’t enough vegans to generate the kind of publicity we wanted; I needed to bring in dog lovers. I needed to appear moderate and relatable, and I decided to focus on a message of ending dog and cat experimentation. Today, that message has gained steam at the federal level, but in 2017, a complete ban of any kind was considered radical.”

Rebekah spent the next several months preparing for the legislative campaign. She researched Wisconsin state laws and found that citizens could pass new legislation by gathering signatures and proposing legislation that would be voted on as a ballot initiative.

One Saturday morning in late 2017, Rebekah had brunch with Jamie Hagenow, the owner of Mount Horeb’s dog grooming salon. It was the start of a partnership that would form the heart of the local fight to free Ridglan’s dogs for the next nine years. They named the organization they would build together Dane4Dogs: “I knew that we needed a name that would convey ‘we’re just a group of regular dog lovers!’ and I quickly settled on Dane4Dogs,” says Rebecca. “I figured we’d throw it away in a few months when the legislative effort was over anyways.”

In May 2018, DxE’s open rescue at Ridglan Farms was revealed publicly for the first time through an article in The Intercept. Dane4Dogs moved quickly into action. Its kickoff event was at the Mount Horeb Summer Frolic. “Over 30 vegans, many from that living room, showed up to gather signatures for our ballot initiative to shut down Ridglan Farms in a massive ambush that prompted several angry…men to confront us and call the cops,” recalls Rebekah.

By that November, Dane4Dogs volunteers had knocked on every door in Mount Horeb and nearly every yard had a yard sign either for or against the ballot initiative. There was a fiery letter to the editor war in the local papers as the two sides duked it out. There were billboards and educational forums and mailers. The ballot initiative made the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal. And according to Wisconsin Public Radio, “The most divisive item on the ballot this election season in the rural village of Mount Horeb isn’t about candidates. It’s about dogs.”

The Mount Horeb ballot initiative did not pass, but Rebekah notes that it kickstarted a conversation and built momentum for future efforts.

“Our volunteers tabled at countless community events, weekends at the farmers’ market, and dog parks, educating thousands of residents about Ridglan Farms and dog experimentation. We helped the residents of Spring Green fight their own research puppy mill, Tri-Valley Resources, a horrible place that breeds and sells large hounds for experimentation. We helped seven Wisconsin cities pass bans on dog and cat experimentation, including Spring Green, and four of those cities (Kimberly, Little Chute, Sun Prairie and Combined Locks) passed bans on all animal experimentation. We rescued six Envigo beagles, giving the former research dogs a chance at a new life with loving families.” (Envigo, a Virginia-based breeder of beagles, was shut down in 2022 for mistreating its animals.)

Once the Ridglan Farms campaign was underway, Dane4Dogs continued to play key roles. The organization applied endless pressure to government agencies, joined with Wayne Hsiung, the Alliance for Animals and the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project to petition Judge Rhonda Lanford to appoint a special prosecutor who would go on to investigate the facility, and notified Ridglan’s buyers about evidence of felony and misdemeanor animal cruelty. Despite being sued by Ridglan (the lawsuit was dismissed) Dane4Dogs continued to fight. As Rebekah puts it, “That silly little dog lover group called Dane4Dogs was clearly a thorn in the side of the multi-million dollar puppy mill. As the saying goes, ‘if you think you’re too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent a night with a mosquito.’”      

In the end, the special prosecutor appointed by Judge Lanford negotiated a settlement with Ridglan Farms that did end 60 years of endless breeding and selling innocent puppies to researchers. However, it did not grant freedom to the thousands of dogs already at Ridglan Farms. Nor will it prevent the facility from breeding dogs and using them for on-site research.

Dane4Dogs has adhered faithfully to the rules of the system over the past nine years, despite the fact that its leader was committed, from the beginning, to radical change. It served as a bridge for ordinary Wisconsinites who couldn't stand the thought of a beagle in a cage but felt alienated by the word “activist.” These efforts proved that the conscience of Wisconsin is on the side of the dogs.

Unfortunately, those with the power to enforce Wisconsin’s animal cruelty laws have chosen to abandon 2,000 living, breathing, innocent beings. In response to continued state inaction, Dane4Dogs now supports open rescue, including the upcoming rescue on April 19.

“I’ve sat in enough government meetings to know that our system is broken,” says Rebekah. “The moderate path can achieve limited success, but ultimately, animal liberation will not come through government meetings and paperwork alone. Let’s go get those beagles.”

When the activists return to Ridglan Farms in April, they will finish a project rooted in Wisconsin grassroots activism. It was dreamed about in an Alliance for Animals committee meeting, meditated over quietly at a vigil, pitched at a New Year’s Eve party, supported by an army of volunteers mobilized by Dane4Dogs, and eventually carried out by some of the most highly skilled and courageous open rescuers in the animal rights movement.

The final chapter of Ridglan Farms is being written. When it ends, may every cage be empty.

[Rebekah Robinson contributed to this report.]

Dr. Aaron Yarmel is a philosopher, dialogue facilitator, and activist based in Columbus, Ohio. He is the associate director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University.