WESTERLO — After Mohawk Hudson Humane Society announced in November that it wouldn’t be renewing contracts with several local towns and cities, Westerlo turned to its neighbor for help. 

Supervisor Matthew Kryzak told The Enterprise this week that the town has made the decision to work with Rensselaerville, whose dog-control officer, Cheryl Baitsholts, hosts the town’s kennels on her property, with details yet to be locked in. 

Baitsholts told The Enterprise that she would be meeting with Rensselaerville’s supervisor, John Dolce, next week to discuss it. 

The agreement would not affect the dog control office in Westerlo, which is currently manned by Justin Case and his deputy, Konrad May.

Kryzak called the change a “blessing in disguise,” since the town will not have to pay Mohawk Hudson’s sheltering fee — the town budgeted $1,000 to Mohawk Hudson for 2022 and $900 for 2023, according to town budgets — and pet-owners who have lost their dogs will spared a long drive to Menands. 

He said it’s “something we probably should have investigated a while ago.”

Westerlo, under another administration in 2018, had already considered sheltering strays with the town of Knox because Mohawk Hudson had increased its fees; it’s not clear why the idea didn’t take root. 

State law requires each municipality to have a dog control officer and to house dogs for five to seven days, depending on whether they were wearing a municipal license tag when found; the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society said it keeps dogs an average of 27 days as 54 percent are not claimed by their owners.

Knox, which had built its own shelter about five years ago inside a park maintenance building, currently has a shared-use agreement with the town of Berne, which used to have an agreement with Rensselaerville when Baitsholts was Berne’s dog control officer. 

“There’s definitely a benefit from sharing services with adjacent towns, especially with holding facilities and dog control and anything like that,” Kryzak said. “We do already share a senior bus with Rensselaerville, we also have a shared-services agreement, so this is just something to add to the list.”

Since the four Hilltowns will soon share two facilities, The Enterprise asked Baitsholts whether it might make sense for all the towns to share just one facility, but she suggested that it would be a complicated solution to something that’s hardly a problem. 

These days, dog control officers can leverage social media to quickly connect strays with their owners, Baitsholts said, making it rare for a dog to need shelter for any significant amount of time.

“I haven’t had a dog here all year, now that I think about it …,” she said. “Very rarely have I had a stray dog where I couldn’t find the owner or it stayed here for more than a day in the last couple years.”