Detroit's New PETCO Quietly Opening in a Sea of Strays

There's a lot of excitement surrounding the July 25 opening of Detroit's first-ever Meijer, but it won't be the first Gateway Marketplace retailer to come online. According to a schedule compiled by Crain's, the grand opening of Detroit's first-ever PETCO will upstage the Meijer by two days. Some Google searching reveals that no one seems to care — the PETCO website hasn't even bothered listing the Detroit location on its "Grand Openings" list. While the city's unshakable Food Desert label means media attention for a new Meijer, Detroit actually has an extreme surplus of animals. A 2012 Rolling Stone article puts the number of stray dogs in the city somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000, meaning up to 350 stray dogs per square mile.