Sen. Bill Stanley leaned in, lips puckered, and waited for a kiss from Aphrodite.
She looked at him, lifted her chin and licked him on the side of his face.
Aphrodite is a one-year-old pitbull mix who was rescued from the recent wildfires in California and was available for adoption through the Richmond SPCA. She sat behind the “dog kissing booth” set up by the organization outside of the General Assembly Building on Valentine’s Day, during an event to raise awareness and support for shelter animals. The event was organized by the Richmond SPCA in partnership with Best Friends Animal Society, Richmond Animal League and Homeward Trails Animal Rescue.
Stanley, R-Franklin County, was in his element: surrounded by adoptable dogs and covered in dog hair after petting a couple of them. An animal lover, Stanley has introduced at least one piece of legislation to support animal welfare during each session since he joined the General Assembly as a senator in 2011.
Later that day, Stanley introduced Aphrodite and Tamsen Kingry, chief executive officer of the Richmond SPCA — both of whom were present in the Senate gallery — at the start of the floor session Friday.
“That is such an important message out there,” he said, referring to the event. “What it demonstrates is a need and how we have taken steps forward here in the commonwealth of Virginia in the protection of our companion animals.”
Animal welfare as a family affair
Stanley initially started advocating for animals in the General Assembly to gain the interest of his children. All of the Stanley family’s dogs came from rescue organizations.
“That was a passion for my children as well,” he said. “I said, ‘Okay, let’s do a dog bill to eliminate puppy mills in Virginia.’”
He was told, when he first started as a member of the General Assembly in 2011, to never bring an animal bill to the floor. He decided instead to interpret that warning as a challenge.
“Every year I kept bringing something,” he said. “My kids got very involved in that.”
At first, it was difficult for him to get other lawmakers to sign on to his animal welfare legislation, Stanley said, but as the years passed, the group of supporters for those bills grew and extended across the aisle.
“I’ve had Democrats come up to me and say ‘I hate everything you stand for and your party stands for but what you did for those beagles — I will never work against you,’” he said referring to a 2022 effort that gained international attention and led to the closure of the Envigo facility in Cumberland County where beagles were bred for testing and experimentation.
“When we join forces, we’ve done so much good,” Stanley said.
Support from animal welfare organizations across the state and their grassroots efforts have also helped a number of Stanley’s bills to cross the finish line.
“It is so fun, as a non-elected person in this arena, to watch the two sides come together — they might not agree on anything else but animals bring them together, and it brings out the best in people,” said Sue Bell, executive director of Homeward Trails Animal Rescue.
Bell worked with Stanley and Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County, on legislation that led to the closure of Envigo and the adoption of more than 4,000 beagles to homes across the country.
Closing Envigo
“I fought for two years along with [Sen.] Jennifer Boysko to shut down that facility,” Stanley said. “She’s one of my close friends here in the legislature because of it, and I’d run through a brick wall for her.”
Stanley, Boysko, Bell and the Humane Society as a coalition told Envigo in 2022 that the facility would leave the commonwealth, explained that the facility had overbred the beagles by about 500 dogs and convinced the facility to adopt the more than 4,000 dogs at the facility out, rather than euthanize them.
“We just started hauling in there and within two months we had 500 beagles out of there,” Bell said.
The General Assembly passed four bills, deemed the Beagle Bills, to shut Envigo down and hold them accountable for their treatment of the animals. Envigo pled guilty to multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act in 2024.
Every one of the more than 4,000 beagles were adopted out to homes across the country. Some high-profile adopters include Prince Harry and Megan Markle, who adopted a seven-year-old beagle named Momma Mia. Former NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler adopted two beagles, now named Violet and Phoebe Weebie, and Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, adopted a beagle now named Mila.
“I drove one up to the governor of New Jersey,” Bell said.
Stanley was the first person to adopt Envigo beagles, Daisy and Dixey, who he met on separate trips out to the facility in 2022, during his work to shut it down.
He met Daisy in a loading bay when she was being prepared for transport to another facility where she would have been tested on. Stanley put his hand in her crate, and she put her head in his hand and looked up at him.
“I said, ‘How much for this dog? This dog is too nice to be experimented on,’ and I badgered them all the way to the office. They finally relented,” he said.
He met Dixie on another trip to the facility later that year.
“This one puppy just clung to me, so I wrote another check,” he said. “They’re the two best dogs ever.”
This year’s bills
Both of Stanley’s animal bills this year have cleared their respective committees and are on their way to the House floor after passing the Senate.
“We expect them to pass,” Stanley said Friday.
One of the bills, SB 903, is an effort to create regulations that would increase transparency regarding the use of puppy mill dogs and their sale to and through pet shops.
“I’ve been working on bills for fifteen years to stop puppy mills in Virginia and from coming [into] Virginia. I think we’re in the last steps to make sure that’s an absolute,” he said.
The other bill, SB 907, would require baboons to be transferred to a sanctuary after their time as a test subject in a laboratory is over.
“They should be given the opportunity to feel grass, to feel the sun on their face. They’ve served their debt to humanity and now we owe them the debt of that little bit of freedom and little bit of life,” he said.
He hoped the bill would also motivate medical schools that buy non-human primates for testing to be more humane in their treatment of the animals while they endure their time as test subjects.
“We have an obligation as human beings to take care of these beautiful animals that God gave us,” Stanley said. “We owe that to them. When I started [in the General Assembly] fifteen years ago, we were probably one of the worst states for animal companion protection, now we’re one of the best — we lead the way in a lot of different ways.”