Like many of you, I spend time each day scrolling through the interminable conflicts our country manages to get into, finding them all terribly confusing.
For instance, just last January, President Trump mentioned possible military action against Greenland: “We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force…” At the time, I thought, “Attack Greenland? What’s next, Disneyland?”
Or how about the bombing of people in motorboats from Venezuela suspected of transporting illegal drugs to the U.S.? Then we kidnap Venezuelan President Maduro, who is now in New York facing drug-trafficking charges, set up a puppet leader in his place, and the drug problem is solved, right?
Well, not according to last Sunday’s news when media reported that three people were killed after a military strike demolished a motorboat in the Caribbean Sea.
Since the military has never provided evidence that any of the vessels so far were carrying drugs, nor that the 181 people killed were doing anything illegal, this is an ongoing conflict with no clear explanation.
But, of course, the conflict most difficult to grasp is the current one with Iran. The reasons given by the administration for the conflict constantly change, and I’m sure you have heard them all.
Just when one thinks he has a handle on the conflict, the situation shifts. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Wait, now it’s open. This ship can go through, but this one can’t. Oil prices are up, then down.
As if that series of conflicts is not confusing enough, the president suddenly throws out an off-the-cuff remark like “We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with Iran.” What? There’s a conflict with Cuba now? Stop by and do what?
All the inexplicable conflicts in the media can make one afraid to even access the news. I know that is the way I felt—that is, until last Saturday morning when I happened to come across this headline, “Hundreds trying to storm Wisconsin beagle research facility met with rubber bullets and tear gas.”
My immediate reaction was “Now, this sounds like a conflict I can understand.”
So, I read several beagle-related articles and decided to ignore every other conflict in the news that day because this is the BIG story. And what makes it the big story is that the conflict is as simple as black and white—or rather, brown and white: It’s a battle to Save the Beagles.
On Saturday, April 18, about 1,000 animal welfare activists tried to gain entry to a beagle breeding and research facility called Ridglan Farms in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Police turned them back using rubber bullets and pepper spray and arrested several protestors.
Ridglan Farms has been in business since 1966. The facility has housed up to 3,200 beagles and breeds dogs for its own research while also selling beagles to other private and public researchers. Beagles have long been used for research because of their “easygoing, obedient nature.”
Based on testimony from former employees and videotapes taken by activists that depicted thousands of beagles in stacked wire cages containing as many as three dogs per cage, Ridglan Farms has faced a string of legal challenges.
In Sept. 2025, the Wisconsin State Veterinary Examining Board unanimously voted to suspend the license of Dr. Richard Van Domelen, the lead veterinarian at Ridglan Farms, for running an inhumane and poorly operated beagle breeding facility.
Three months later, Ridglan Farms was charged with 311 violations of the Wisconsin Administrative Code, including failing to handle dogs “in a humane manner that does not cause physical harm or unnecessary injury.” Specific charges included painful surgical practices performed without anesthesia or post-operation pain relief and violating standards in shelter and space requirements, sanitation, ventilation, and enclosures.
To avoid criminal prosecution, Ridglan Farms worked out an agreement that boiled down to ending the selling of beagles to other research facilities while continuing to keep some dogs for its own research.
Obviously, animal rights organizations are not satisfied.
So, the protestors’ action last Saturday was not an impulsively emotional outburst. It was an act of desperation after years of legal wrangling to prevent the cruelty of dogs for profit.
Besides the fact that it is a clear-cut conflict that anyone can easily understand, another reason the Ridglan Farms conflict supersedes all the other hopelessly futile conflicts in the news is the fact that it is nonpartisan.
The beagles are not red dogs or blue dogs; they’re not wacko conservative dogs or lunatic liberal dogs. They’re just dogs.
And since they’re just dogs, one may think people are crazy for even caring about such a conflict. Yet, out of all the conflicts in the media this past week, this was the only one that made complete sense.
That’s because it’s the one conflict with a simple, desirable outcome: Save the beagles.
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