St. Paul Animal Control director: 'Minnesota is just a wonderful rescue community'

Molly Lunaris was working as a teacher in Washington, D.C., when she made a critical career discovery: She felt a greater passion for a summer job in animal control than she did for teaching.

So, when an opportunity arose for the Richfield native to return to Minnesota and a job with St. Paul Animal Control, she took it. That was 13 years ago. Now, Lunaris is in charge of both the department's Field Services and Shelter programs.

Animal Control provides care for more than 2,000 dogs, cats and other critters at the city's shelter every year. Lunaris recently sat down with Eye On St. Paul to discuss dogs, cats, maybe a chicken or two — as well as to share a couple of things you might not know about owning a pet in St. Paul.

This interview was edited for length.

Q: How many animals do you have in shelter at any one time?

A: It's really hard to say. It fluctuates so much by season. In January when it's cold, all of the dogs are hiding inside the house and the cats are too. We might have somewhere in the 10-15 range. And then around the summer it's not unusual for us to have maybe 50 animals here at a time.

Q: What is the primary reason you have animals in the shelter?

Q: How long will you hold an animal before you have to euthanize it or send it somewhere else?

A: We don't have any type of a time limit on that. We have kept animals here at the shelter for months. [State law requires holding a lost animal for at least five business days before release. After the holding period is over, animals may be released to animal rescue organizations.]

Q: Are you open seven days a week?

A: No. We're open Monday through Friday. Realistically, it's seven days. Eight with holidays. We had an animal surrendered three weeks ago and he's going out to a foster today.

Q: Do you have a relationship with foster organizations?

We've been able to grow our programs to the point that we really only euthanize 5 percent to 6 percent of the animals that come in. People talk about no kill versus kill shelters — it's not language I love, but people use those terms — and the target for shelters that call themselves no-kill is 90 percent.

Q: So, you either return to the owner or foster almost all the animals you get?

A: Or take them to another shelter.

Q: Why are your numbers are so strong?

A: That's what the rate is for the Twin Cities in general. Minnesota is just a wonderful rescue community that really wants to help animals. That really allows shelters that are small like this or have limited resources to really grow the numbers.

A: We're primarily dogs and cats. In addition to that, we have a domestic bunny who is hanging out outside my office. We also have some roosters here. On most days, I would say we have a handful of roosters in our building.

This year we have had a lamb and a baby goat in. The goat was seized. [The owners] couldn't care for it. The lamb was found stray. She was pretty sickly [and had to be euthanized]. But she had a great two weeks of lots of pampering by the veterinarian.

Q: How many officers do you have?

A: Right now, I have three animal services officers. And we're staffed for five, so we have a couple of positions open that we're working to hire. We're on-call 24 hours a day. If there's an animal emergency in the middle of the night, we get called out of bed.

Q: If people let their cat go outside the house, are they breaking the law?