By Wendy Pitlick Black Hills Pioneer
LEAD — The city of Lead wants to make sure hybrid wolves are not kept in town.
That’s why city officials are working to redefine the term hybrid in its ordinance that prohibits keeping wild animals as pets inside city limits. The ordinance states, “… It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or permit to be kept on their premises, any wild or vicious animal for display or for exhibition purposes.” The ordinance also defines hybrids as “any animals that have been bred with wolves resulting in a wolf hybrid.”
Officer Paul Witcraft said he is working on further defining what a wolf hybrid is, in order to strengthen the ordinance. The catalyst for the work was a May incident, when a dog officials claim to be a wolf hybrid escaped from its enclosure, and allegedly injured another dog.
Police Chief John Wainman said Mark Valdez has had his dogs in Lead for many years, and May’s incident was the first of its kind.
“Give the guy some credit,” Wainman said. “He’s had those animals up there for as long as I’ve been here, and this is the first complaint we have had about them being at large. He’s a great pet owner. I just don’t think we want hybrid wolves.”
But Valdez claims his dogs are Siberian huskies, not wolves. He said they have bloodlines that go back for 30 years, and are registered with the Universal Kennel Club International, based in New York.
He also says there are conflicting DNA tests regarding the dogs’ origins. Following the incident when Valdez’s dogs escaped from their enclosure, Lead police obtained a search warrant to conduct a DNA test for the dogs. Witcraft said he sent the sample to the S.D. Animal Control board and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for testing, and the sample came back positive for a wolf hybrid.
However, at the same time Valdez said he conducted his own DNA test. He took his dogs to the veterinarian, had blood drawn, and sent it to Mars Animal Laboratory in Nebraska. The results came back negative for a wolf hybrid, and Valdez said he has the documentation to prove it.
“My sample wasn’t contaminated by a chain of custody like there’s was,” Valdez said. “My sample was done by a veterinarian and it was sent by the veterinarian. Their’s was done by a veterinarian technician, the blood sample was out of my sight for a few minutes, and a sample of blood was brought out and handed to Paul Witcraft. So there is a chain of custody there. Who knows if that was my dog’s DNA.”
Valdez, who still has his dogs at his home on Addie Street, said he is prepared to take the city to court to prove his case.
But whether the dogs are hybrids or not does not change the research Witcraft is doing to more specifically define hybrids that are banned from city limits. The research for the ordinance is ongoing, Witcraft said. But as soon as he has completed his research, a new ordinance is expected to be presented to the Lead City Commission for review.