The Animal Control Division of the Duluth Police Department has three officers, two full-time and one part-time. Their duties include rounding up the city’s stray animals and responding to all animal-related calls for service—the abused animal reports, the barking complaints, the strangely-acting wildlife. With the help of volunteers, they house and care for animals at the city animal shelter at 27^th Avenue West and Courtland Street, across the street from the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District wastewater treatment plant. 

The shelter is a blocky yellow building that looks small on the outside but seems bigger inside. When I visited on June 22, I was shown around by Officers Carrie Lane and Heather Axtell, two-thirds of the division. A dog that looked like a gigantic black poodle bounded along with us, asking everybody for attention. Much of the tour consisted of me and the giant poodle body-slamming each other, a game we both seemed to enjoy.

The shelter has a long room for dogs, consisting of cages lining both sides of a central aisle. Only two dogs were in the cages—one that barked constantly and one that didn’t. In the cat room, five or six cats lounged about in cages. A few more lounged about outside of cages. They all seemed mellow, except for one hyperactive white one endlessly meowing and twisting around in its cage. I was surprised. I had expected more animals. “Is this normal?” I asked.

Officer Lane said it was, and much of the reason was due to social media. “We get a lot fewer [animals] than we used to, because of Facebook and Lost Dogs Minnesota and Missing Pets in the Northland and Craigslist and all these free places people can advertise, so the numbers for us are actually going way down for dogs, and for stray animals in general. The city used to be more like 1,200 a year.” 

In 2016, the animal shelter handled 328 dogs and 327 cats; in 2015, the numbers were 379 dogs and 274 cats.

There is still a steady flow of animals in and out. The flow increases at certain times, like the Fourth of July. “We get lots of dogs that are afraid of fireworks and they run away,” said Lane. “But then the next day everybody’s claiming them again. We are usually swamped on the fifth of July.” If an animal is microchipped, shelter workers scan it and notify the owner. Many pets, especially dogs, are reclaimed. Of the 328 dogs the shelter processed in 2016, 239 of them, or 73 percent, were reclaimed by their owners. 

“Sometimes we’ll cycle through two or three dogs a day that come in and go home, and they’re not even here for the whole day,” said Lane.

The reclaim rate for cats is much lower. Only 42 of 251 adult cats, or 17 percent, were reclaimed in 2016. There are also many more kittens than puppies left at the shelter. In 2015 and 2016, the shelter took in 144 kittens and 15 puppies.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the shelter shared its space with Animal Allies Humane Society, the nonprofit group that offers spay and neuter services to pet owners and seeks to place needy animals in adoptive homes. In those days, the shelter was “packed,” according to Lane. Animal Allies moved into their current, larger facility on Rice Lake Road in 2009. After stray animals have been at the city shelter for at least five days without being reclaimed, they are offered to Animal Allies. 

I asked if the number of animals at the city shelter might have dropped because now more people were bringing strays directly to Animal Allies. Officer Axtell said no. “They can’t go there if they’re left in the city limits. They have to leave them here first.”

Owner surrenders are in a different category than strays. Owners wishing to get rid of their pets may surrender them directly to Animal Allies without first bringing them to the city shelter. When that happens, Animal Allies charges $100 per dog and $45 per cat to take the animals. I asked Lane how much the city charged people who showed up at the shelter wanting to surrender their pets.

“We just take them,” said Lane. “I just say, ‘Whatever. Just bring the dog in.’… The thing is, if you can’t keep your pet, it’s usually a terrible sad situation for you anyway, [and] it just adds insult to injury to have to pay.”

“Especially when people are really poor,” said Axtell. “We get a lot of people who are being evicted from their home and they have nothing.”

Animals are still euthanized at the city shelter (as well as at Animal Allies). Of the 707 dogs admitted to the shelter in the last two years, 17 were euthanized, all but one for being too aggressive. “We’re talking really aggressive,” said Lane. “We’re not talking a little bit...Even if they’re a little bit iffy, we still place them.”

Of 601 cats and kittens admitted to the shelter in 2015 and ‘16, 6 had to be euthanized. All of them were sick. Euthanizations are carried out on-site by the animal control officers, using an injection.

Historically speaking, these numbers are very low. One newspaper article that I found talked about the city euthanizing 2,000 animals, mostly feral cats, in 1983. Today, the city and Animal Allies spay, neuter, and vaccinate feral cats and seek to place them on farms as barn cats.

The animal shelter is meant for dogs and cats, but many other types of fauna have strolled through its doors as well. 

“Usually it’s like rabbits and hamsters and sometimes ferrets and stuff,” said Lane.

“Chickens,” said Axtell.

“There were the goats,” said Lane.

“We had two goats. We’ve had pigs,” said Axtell.

“There was one goat that we had that walked on a leash, and was tame and house-trained. She would never go the bathroom in here. You would take her out on a leash and she would go out there,” said Lane.

“A parakeet,” said Axtell.

“Where do you bring a chicken?” I asked.

“Usually we find people who have farms that want hens,” said Axtell.

“And usually it’s somebody we know that we’ve foisted them off on,” Lane said, laughing. Apparently city workers who come through the facility are good for taking home animals. I learned of an electrician who came to do some wiring and left with two free hens.

In addition to Animal Allies, the city shelter works with other shelters in Minnesota and Wisconsin to place animals. Wild animals they bring to Wildwoods, a Duluth nonprofit devoted to wild animal care.

DNT rewrites history

On May 4, I reported on the city’s plan to require residents to pave their backyard parking spots. As proposed, the ordinance would have applied to all residents. Landlords, however, worried that they would be unfairly impacted, because the city would only enforce the ordinance in response to resident complaints and during routine inspections of rental properties.

Two weeks later, the Duluth News Tribune reported that the new rule was specifically aimed at landlords. On May 19, they reported that “Duluth proposes landlords replace gravel backyard lots.” The story began: “Controversial proposed changes in Duluth’s parking requirements for rental housing soon will be heading to the City Council for consideration.”

This was wrong. There was nothing specifically about rentals in the ordinance. The rule was meant to apply to everybody.

On May 22, the city council held two meetings on the issue: One committee meeting and one regular council meeting. During each meeting, Councilor Zack Filipovich took the opportunity to publicly chide the News Tribune for their inaccurate portrayal of the situation.

On May 23, the DNT ran a story: “Duluth city council backs off paved parking.” Suddenly, they had their facts straight. Gone was any mention about the ordinance targeting rentals. Without explanation, the erroneous claim simply disappeared from the narrative. The new article carried on with the correct facts as if they had never said anything else.

The next day, the DNT’s editorial team, led by Chuck Frederick, came roaring out of the gates with indignation. “The rule change was targeted at rentals,” they stormed. “[Why only] at rentals?”….[This proposal] promises to be an intrusion on business activity and an infringement on property owners’ right to use their properties.” 

The DNT’s editorial room apparently hadn’t noticed the newsroom’s corrected version of the story. And  their continued misunderstanding of the issue showed that they hadn’t read my own article on the subject, either. I emailed the publisher, editor, and editorial editor of the News Tribune, alerting them to their mistake and providing a link to my article. 

Today, if you examine the May 24 editorial that was published in the DNT and compare it with the May 24 editorial that is preserved in their online archives, you will notice that the two editorials are different. The original editorial reads: “The rule change was targeted at rentals.” Online, it says: “The rule change seems targeted at rentals, as that’s where most backyard parking occurs.” In response to my complaint, the DNT altered the historical record, in small ways, to hide their mistake. 

Sadly, the new editorial is also incorrect. Most backyard parking doesn’t occur at rentals; it occurs everywhere. But let’s be fair: If you were Chuck Frederick and you had to make something up on the spur of the moment, could you do better?

On June 12, the city council unanimously rejected paved backyard parking.