Venus and Mercury, two Swedish Briard dogs, found a loving home with Penn researchers Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire after participating in a study to develop a gene therapy for a human form of blindness.PEGGY PETERSON PHOTOGRAPHYLouie is a redbone coonhound. He’s almost four years old and loves to play and chew on bones, just like most other dogs. But unlike his neighborhood pals, Louie’s back story is pretty unique. He used to live in a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and was part of a study to examine the physiology of asthma.
“He was such a nice dog,” says Bob Adams, head of research animal resources at JHU. The pup was a little over a year old when his time in the asthma study was over. “I took a picture of him and sent it to my wife and said, ‘What do you think?’ and she said, ‘Sure.’ . . . So I adopted Louie.”
Louie’s move from the lab to the home life is an example of a long-standing tradition of adoption among scientists and vets, who often try to rehome research animals once the lab work is done.
JHU’s first lab animal was adopted in 1983. “At least, that’s the earliest one I have paperwork for,” Adams says. “We’ve been doing this for a long ...
