Black Sabbath bass player, Debbie Gibson praise effort to find new homes for beagles

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Pop star Debbie Gibson and Terry “Geezer” Butler, co-founder of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, are singing the same tune when it comes to sparing dogs from medical experiments.

The unlikely pair came together Tuesday not for a most unusual duet, but instead to praise ongoing efforts to find new homes for roughly 1,500 beagles purchased from dog breeder and research facility Ridglan Farms outside of Madison.

Forget Black Sabbath’s anti-war anthem “War Pigs.” This day was all about the dogs — more specifically, the beagles.

“It was so profound to be able to hold each of these dogs in our arms and be able to assure them that their new life was starting,” Gibson said. “Today was a very emotional day.”

Both Gibson and Butler held beagles from Ridglan Farms that had been transported from the facility to the humane society on Tuesday.

“They’ve never let me down,” Butler said of his pet dogs at the Dane County Humane Society, which is working to find new homes for 500 beagles. “They’re always loving.”

As they and others spoke in the humane society's barn, beagles from Ridglan Farms sat in the arms of volunteers as they waited to be seen by veterinarians for a health check, vaccinations and other care.

The Washington, D.C.-based Center for a Humane Economy and Florida's Big Dog Ranch Rescue, which both oppose using animals in research, struck the deal last month to buy the dogs for an undisclosed amount from Ridglan Farms.

The deal was announced just days after a violent clash between animal welfare advocates and police outside of the Ridglan Farms facility. Police used tear gas and pepper spray to turn back activists who said they were there to take the dogs. Protesters also broke into the facility in March and took 30 dogs.

Numerous groups are working to transfer the 1,500 dogs bought from Ridglan to facilities where they will get veterinary care and be prepared for transport to shelters around the country, where they will eventually be put up for adoption.

More than 1,300 people have expressed interest to the Dane County Humane Society alone in adopting the dogs, said Amy Good, the society's director of marketing.

“It’s not a tough sell to get beagles into homes," said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy. "The response across the nation has been overwhelming.”

The first 1,000 dogs were removed earlier this month and are in temporary shelters with agencies partnering with Big Dog Ranch Rescue. The Dane County Humane Society began receiving the remaining 500 dogs this week.

Ridglan Farms agreed in October to give up its state breeding license as of July 1 as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on felony animal mistreatment charges. The firm has denied mistreating animals, but a special prosecutor determined that Ridglan Farms was performing eye procedures that violated state veterinary standards.

Butler, who said he has five dogs and five cats at home, called it a historic day for the end of experimenting on animals.

“This is just the beginning,” he said.

Gibson, who released her debut album at age 16 in 1987, said she planned on fostering and possibly adopting one of the beagles she met on Tuesday.

“This little guy was the last one put in my arms, and I couldn’t put him back in a cage,” she said, holding the beagle as she spoke.

Asked whether they will ever work together on a song about dogs, Butler and Gibson chuckled.

“Maybe,” Butler said with a smile and a beagle still on his lap.

Pop star Debbie Gibson and Black Sabbath co-founder Terry "Geezer" Butler hold beagles that were purchased from a Dane County animal research facility on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)

Black Sabbath co-founder Terry "Geezer" Butler watch beagles that were purchased from a Dane County animal research facility play outside on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)

Pop star Debbie Gibson and Black Sabbath co-founder Terry "Geezer" Butler hold beagles that were purchased from a Dane County animal research facility on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)

Beagles that were purchased from a Dane County animal research facility play outside on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Negotiators for baseball players and owners began what figures to be lengthy and acrimonious collective bargaining negotiations Tuesday to replace their labor contract that expires Dec. 1, with management likely to propose a salary cap system the union has vowed never to accept.

An initial session of about two hours took place at the office of the Major League Baseball Players Association, a five-minute walk from Major League Baseball's headquarters in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center. The meeting lasted about two hours and was scheduled for initial presentations from each side on their view of the sport and its economics. No proposals were made.

Players who attended included Mets infielder Marcus Semien, a member of the union's eight-man executive subcommittee, along with Mets teammates Clay Holmes, David Peterson, Austin Slater and Sean Manaea. Several Detroit Tigers, who were in town to play the Mets, also were at the meeting and additional players joined via video conference.

“It’s the first one I’ve been at, so I don’t really have much to compare it to," Holmes said. "It was just kind of initial meetings, first time the sides were getting together and kind of sharing their thoughts on kind of where they thought things were at and what they thought was best for kind of the game moving forward.”

The sport's five-year labor contract expires Dec. 1, and baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has said repeatedly that management prefers offseason lockouts to in-season strikes, aiming to prevent the loss of regular-season games. Baseball has not lost regular-season games to a work stoppage since a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that caused the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years.

Talks for the last agreement began in April 2021 and ended with a deal on March 10, 2022 that preserved the 162-game schedule only after the sides bargained past several deadlines and Manfred announced the cancellation of 184 games, which were restored.

Bruce Meyer will lead negotiations for the union, as he did in 2021-22, but in his new role as interim union head. He moved up from deputy director in February after the forced resignation of Tony Clark, a former All-Star first baseman who took over following the death of Michael Weiner in 2013.

Deputy commissioner Dan Halem heads MLB's negotiations team, as he did in talks for the previous two agreements.

MLB and Meyer declined to comment on the session.

“I think just player engagement as a whole, it just seems like there’s a lot of it right now,” Holmes said. “Guys are wanting to hear and guys are wanting to be there and so, just to be able to kind of be there and pass along things that you may see or learn or just have conversations there.”

Some major league owners have said a salary cap system that also contains a floor is needed and would improve the sport. MLB, unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, has not had a cap system, but since 2003 has had a luxury tax designed to slow spending.

“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America last summer. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem."

Restraints had not appeared to have had much impact on the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets in recent years. The Dodgers shattered MLB's spending records with a combined $515 million in payroll and luxury tax last year en route to their second straight World Series title, according to final figures compiled by the commissioner’s office, and Los Angeles is projected for the highest total again in 2026. The ratio of the five highest spenders to the five lowest increased from 3.6 in 2021 to a record-high 4.7 last year.

The union maintains a cap system decreases spending on players, while management argues a cap and a floor would benefit most players.

Players increased their potential war chest of cash and investments ahead of collective bargaining to $415 million heading into 2026. MLB also has been accumulating cash ahead of bargaining, about $75 million per club in withheld central fund distributions.

AP Baseball Writer Mike Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

FILE - Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball answers questions during a news conference at the MLB winter meetings, Dec. 8, 2025, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux, file)

FILE - Attorney Bruce Meyer, the current interim executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, speaks at a news conference in New York, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)