Town of Bethel
BEWARE OF THE DOG (AND CAT) HOARDER:
On animal control issues, Bethel's Animal Control Officer Henni Anker is the law in the fifth-largest town in Sullivan County. But she also runs an illegal animal rescue operation at her home on Gabriel Road. She owns cats, dogs, geese, donkeys, birds. She owns a bobcat that paces back and forth in a run that's visible from the road.The town of Bethel has no record of the facility.
Anker, the authority in Bethel, is breaking the town's kennel law (she has no kennel license).
She is also breaking the state's dog-licensing law that she is paid $13,400 annually to enforce (she has licensed only four dogs in her name with the town but has several more tied outside).
At least, Anker was breaking these laws last month, when a reporter and photographer stood outside her locked gate.
By all accounts, nobody loves animals more than Henni Anker does. She encourages everyone she sees to get their pets spayed and neutered. She's working with other dog control officers, seeking to build a new shelter in Sullivan County. She is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.
She also has been fired twice as the shelter manager of the SPCA in Rock Hill, during that organization's frequent internal battles. SPCA officials have called Anker a hoarder, someone who can't stop herself from acquiring more and more animals.
Is Anker good? Bad? A hero? A hoarder?
What is she?
...
Sullivan County is a case study in why the law needs to be changed to provide more state oversight, not only of private shelters but of a county's animal control system.In New York, it is left to the smallest unit of government to deal with the problems. Generally, town dog control officers, municipal cops and sheriff's deputies enforce the statutes under Ag and Markets law. In Sullivan, animal control is, with few exceptions, an afterthought — a history of failure.
Sullivan County has no stable nonprofit shelter. Most of the towns have no facilities, have shunned the SPCA because of its frequent management changes and ship their dogs to Port Jervis and Middletown.
The SPCA has been under investigation by the sheriff's department for mismanagement at the shelter in Rock Hill and for seizing animals without authority. Last week, Sullivan County Manager David Fanslau announced that the county was severing all ties with the agency and would not pay a $16,650 bill for services. Instead of using the SPCA, the county plans to ship all the dogs seized in cruelty cases to Liberty's kennel, which has space for eight dogs.
Once again, county officials blame the SPCA. All this, however, masks a bigger problem. The SPCA, as a private nonprofit, is not obligated to do anything for the county or the towns. By state law, animal control is the local government's responsibility. A town or city must have a place to put stray dogs or dogs seized under the cruelty statutes. A municipality must build its own kennel or contract with a nonprofit agency, like the SPCA, to take the dogs.
What about the towns? Eight of Sullivan's 15 towns have animal control budgets of $10,000 or less. Of these towns, only four towns — Liberty, Bethel, Neversink and Fallsburg — have kennels. These municipal kennels have room for about 26 dogs. This statistic is worth repeating. That's space for 26 dogs in all of Sullivan's municipal kennels.
Confronted with a house-of-horrors situation with hundreds of dogs and cats living in feces, where are the facilities to put the animals? Sullivan's SPCA has hung around all these years, a barely functioning, local embarrassment, for this reason. There is no alternative.
With no infrastructure and no state oversight, the system in Sullivan County frequently breaks down.