Lab Beagles: What Science and All of Us Owe To Research Dogs

Source: Diogo Miranda/Pexels.

Beagles are very popular companion dogs and also very popular among breeding facilities and research laboratories where they live highly compromised lives, all "in the name of research" to help humans.¹

Many, if not most people, have no idea what goes on behind these closed doors. I've often wondered why these wonderful dogs rather than others wound up being used for a sorts of research, and now I know because of Dr. Brad Bolman's excellent new book Lab Dog. What Global Science Owes American Beagles.

In his well-written and well-researched book, Bolman "explains how the laboratory dog became a subject of intense focus for twentieth-century scientists and charts the beagle’s surprising trajectory through global science." He also "sheds new light on pivotal stories of twentieth-century science, including the Manhattan Project, tobacco controversies, contraceptive testing, and behavioral genetics research." These studies showed that dogs are intelligent sentient beings who deserve moral protection.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Lab Dog and how does it relate to your background and general areas of interest?

Brad Bolman: For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by the question of how we come to know and differentiate ourselves from other organisms. What makes us similar to pigs or different from dolphins? What knowledge do we draw from to make those distinctions? In college, I started researching the history of 20^th century animal experimentation, and I noticed something surprising while reading reports from American nuclear laboratories: many facilities funded research with mice, rats, miniature pigs, etc.—but also Beagle dogs. I wondered, why this specific breed compared to any other?

In grad school I tried to answer that question, and I realized that you get a radically different view of modern science when you approach it not by following particular scientists or disciplines, but the dogs themselves. What might beagling through the history of science tell us about our world? Lab Dog is my attempt to answer that question.

MB: Who do you hope to reach?

BB: I always write with the largest possible audience in mind, and I genuinely think there’s something interesting here for anyone—that’s not just the marketer in me. For dog lovers, there’s a lot of surprising history: Where did everyone get the idea that dogs were colorblind? Why does the incorrect notion of “dog years” still survive? Those interested in science, medicine, or technology will find new insights even for well-known stories, such as the Manhattan Project or the thalidomide crisis. As an academic historian, part of my goal was to write a comprehensive account of the modern laboratory dog, providing a solid foundation for scholars in a variety of fields for years to come. Hopefully I’ve done that.

Source: University of Chicago Press/with permission.

MB: What are some of the topics you consider and what are some of your major messages?

BB: There’s a lot, but one major argument of the book is that animal research is more than just “science”: there are always infused cultural assumptions, ideas about the human past and visions of our potential futures. Donna J. Harraway once argued that science is storytelling—which doesn’t mean it’s false—and it’s vital to recognize this even if you don’t support animal experimentation, because the persuasiveness of animal studies explains some of their longevity.

One broad arc of the book is thus how scientists used dogs—especially beagles—as proxies for understanding human nature. Whether it’s asking if civilians will break down during wartime bombing raids, smokers will get cancer from cigarettes, or Alzheimer’s can be reversed by exercise and diet—dogs were positioned as proxy humans with really far-reaching consequences.

MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about dogs they will stop treating them like unfeeling objects and give them more compassion, respect, and dignity?

BB: I am, but let me answer this in a slightly roundabout way: One of the most surprising responses to my book, from colleagues and strangers alike, has been some variant of “This sounds too sad to read.” For me, that’s a strange response, and it’s not something people say to my friends who have written about, say, world wars or pandemics—sad topics! Naturally there are difficult passages in Lab Dog, because any honest accounting of our past requires tarrying with discomfort, but those who read it always say there’s a lightness to the style, even some humor. So what makes it seem so uniquely sad?

The book offers part of the answer. We have become extremely sentimental about dogs, myself included: I love my dog, Laszlo, and flinch at fake animal violence in media. But this “reflex sentimentality,” to give it a name, can get in the way of thinking deeply about how to create a better world for dogs and ourselves. Lab Dog is, in part, a history of this reflex sentimentality: how did we go from seeing dogs mostly as useful tools to complexly sentient companions who need a daily anti-aging pill? One answer is that scientific research with dogs produced many of the insights that undermined support for further scientific research with dogs. That’s an interesting paradox, and it’s one that challenges easy assumptions about the value of animal studies.

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We need more compassion and respect for dogs. As you know from Unleashing Your Dog or A Dog’s World, part of that means allowing dogs to be, not confined in simplistic or overly saccharine visions of what we want from them. Hopefully understanding how we got to where we are now can give us insight into where we might want to go next.

MB: How does your work differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

BB: I think Lab Dog is unique: it covers a lot of history, disciplines, ideas, and countries in a relatively novel way. One early inspiration was Harriet Ritvo’s The Animal Estate, which showed how ideas about animals in Victorian Britain reflected profound cultural preoccupations. Lab Dog approaches similar questions in new contexts; Michael Worboys’ Doggy People makes for a nice supplement.

Recently, a friend joked that 2025 was the Year of the Lab Dog, because five or so months after my Lab Dog was published, journalist Melanie Kaplan also published a book called Lab Dog. It’s a good title! My work appears in the her book, and I think the two can be read usefully alongside each other, combining history and social theory with reportage and personal narrative.