“After fifteen minutes of being in the house, she was rolling around and playing with my other dog’s toys,” she said of Malina’s easy adjustment period.
Smieszek and the Animal Research Rights Committee hope their efforts, and Vanda’s compliance, inspire other testing facilities across the country to not see their lab dogs as supplies, but as living, breathing creatures that deserve to live full lives, especially after helping humans through testing.
These changes can be made, like they were at Vanda, by putting a simple clause in every contract between labs and pharmaceutical companies which mandates that healthy dogs used in lab testing be found forever homes after experiments are complete.
“Right now you are ordering animals like test tubes, this clause would challenge the person who is signing up to have dogs used in their testing,” Smieszek said
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