Cheryl McGrath says she just couldn't keep up anymore.

For the last decade, she's been running the Yukon Animal Rescue Network (YARN) from her home in Watson Lake. She's taken in hundreds of dogs over the years, and found them new homes in Yukon or elsewhere.

But this month, she had to stop taking in new animals.

"It's hard for me to give that up and to stop accepting animals. I've never had to stop intakes before in the 10 years I've been rescuing, I've just accepted whatever has come my way."

McGrath runs YARN as a labour of love; she also works another full time job to pay the bills.

"Every area of my life is behind. And you know, I have to do something."

McGrath has always relied on finding foster homes for some of the dogs in her care, until they can be adopted out. That's never been too hard in the past, but now it is.

And if she can't find foster homes, then "rescuing" can become simple hoarding, she says.

"If they're not going out the other side of that revolving door, then you have to stop them from coming in, or they jam the door," she said.

McGrath says Yukon's housing crunch is "definitely a factor," with many landlords having "no pet" policies.

"Many people are living in their vehicle rather than giving up pets, or whatever housing situation they can create, because there is no housing, you know?" McGrath said.

"Housing is definitely a big factor as far as whether people can adopt or not."

Whitehorse shelter 'very full'

Samantha Salter, who's on the board of the Whitehorse Humane Society, says the city's shelter is also "very full at the moment."

She says the shelter adopted out a lot of animals during the pandemic, but lately the adoption rate has returned to what it was before the pandemic.

"It seems that for a time there we couldn't get animals out fast enough," she said.

Now that's slowed down, while animals continue to come in to the shelter. Salter says the Humane Society doesn't have statistics on how many animals may have been surrendered because of housing issues, or income, but said there's typically a link.

"We don't always have a full history. So for example, we might get animals dropped off by bylaw and all we get is sort of, their owners were evicted. So we don't necessarily know the full reasons why," she said.

"But the shelter staff do know that a lot of these reasons that come up are related to income, secure housing. It's just hard to say sometimes kind of what came first."

Salter said more animals mean added strain for the Humane Society, which is already strapped for resources and staff. She says other animal welfare organizations are dealing with the similar challenges.

Last year, Kona's Coalition, a non-profit animal welfare group in Whitehorse that helped find homes for pets, shut down. And this week, an organization called Yukon Small Animal Rescue and Advocacy announced on social media that it would no longer take in animals, citing an "extreme rise in bills" as part of the reason.

"There's more work than there are volunteers and resources often," said Salter. "So yeah, it's definitely a strain."