According to Ward, he has four officers to cover all 139 square miles of his department’s jurisdiction and only one employee to deal with dog-bite investigations. Ward says the problem is compounded by the fact that his department’s budget has been slashed while the number of stray dogs has skyrocketed. “With these large open expanses with vacant homes, it’s as if you designed a situation that causes dog problems,” Harry Ward, head of the city’s animal control department, told Bloomberg. Animal control officials say the dogs are often used for criminal purposes by individuals who rely on the dogs to guard abandoned homes where stolen property is kept. Pit bills, or mixed breeds of the dog, are the most prevalent type of dog left out in the wild. In a truly bizarre development, mail carrier Catherine Guzik said she was attacked by “swarms of tiny, ferocious dogs” while on the job. Postal Service has temporarily halted delivery to some of Detroit’s neighborhoods after 25 carriers reported being bitten by dogs from October 2012 through July 2013, the story notes. The city says there were 903 reported dog bites last year, including a woman who had her scalp bitten off by two strays.Īttacks have become so prevalent that the U.S. As far back as 2003, National Geographic reported t he growing number of feral dogs in Detroit.Īnd there are a growing number of stories surrounding the thousands of dogs that are not brought in. The stray-dog claims may sound hard to believe, but they are backed by a number of similar stories over the past two years confirming that the city’s economic woes have created a crisis that extends beyond the city’s declining human population. Local shelters say they are forced to euthanize about 70 percent of the dogs that are brought it, and their facilities are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of abandoned and stray animals. “We went in and fished them out.”īut the reality of the situation is more dire than an impromptu animal pool party. “The dogs were having a pool party,” Moore said.
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