The owner of a Tagish dog rescue facility will not have to give up her dogs, at least for now.

Graham Lang is the lawyer for a number of Tagish residents.

He filed an application for a temporary injunction asking the court to impose a limit of five dogs at the property and have them kept inside at night.

Lang argued this would provide his clients relief until a trial is scheduled in the matter for mid-September.

But last Friday, Justice Gisele Miller found that granting the injunction would cause undue hardship on Shelley Cuthbert, the rescue property’s owner and operator.

She noted it would not give Cuthbert enough time to find placements for the 60 dogs currently in her care, and that she would be forced to euthanize many of them.

“The relief to the applicants would be very short-term, and devastating on Ms. Cuthbert economically and psychologically,” Miller said.

Cuthbert opened Any Domesticated Animal Rescue and Boarding Kennels in 2012 with around 20 to 30 dogs. At its peak, the operation housed 80 dogs.

Lang said the rescue facility was an “immediate problem” when it began operating in the rural residential neighbourhood and that it has only gotten worse over time.

The Selingers own a retirement home behind the property. They say that loud barking has kept them up at all hours of the night and prevented them from enjoying their home.

As well, Stefan Landfried, who runs a bed and breakfast in the area, said the rescue operation has negatively impacted his business.

Lang added that the dogs have behavioural issues, and that dog control in all jurisdictions revolves around the eventual euthanization of unwanted dogs.

“It’s sad, but that’s the truth,” he said.

Cuthbert disputed those claims at last Friday’s hearing.

“I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to the rescue,” she said. “I do not just take in highly aggressive dogs that will attack anybody; that’s not the way a rescue works.”

She said she provides a vital service not offered elsewhere in the Yukon, by taking in dogs that other shelters will not.

This includes working with dogs that have behavioural issues until they can be adopted into the proper home or sent to other rescues in the South.

Over the past five years, Cuthbert said, she has adopted out more than 1,300 dogs.

“There is no dog on the property that cannot go into the right home,” she said.

She added that in the rare case that a dog cannot be rehabilitated, it will be euthanized for public safety.

Since she opened the rescue, she has euthanized one dog for behavioural problems and another for health reasons.

The operation also boards and fosters dogs and will house dogs seized by the RCMP while they complete an investigation.

As well, Cuthbert has a dog catching contract with the Carcross-Tagish First Nation.

Cuthbert said she has spent $80,000 over five years in attempts to mitigate public concerns.

But she claimed an electric fence installed in 2012 became inoperable because the line kept being cut.

As well, neighbours declined a privacy fence in her backyard because “it wouldn’t look nice.”

Some level of barking is normal, Cuthbert argued, and the dogs settle down within five to 10 minutes.

But a lot of the barking, she claimed, is caused by deliberate provocation from vehicle horns, gunshots, bear bangers or “anything they can to stir the dogs.”

None of her neighbours have expressed their concerns to her directly, Cuthbert added.

Instead, they have gone to the media and filed a lawsuit, which she claims has led to harassment and community mobbing.

Cuthbert said this includes damage to her fence and threats to kill her dogs.

Her truck has been egged, she added, and garbage has been thrown at her by unknown people.

“That’s not acceptable behaviour,” she said.

“As human beings, we’re supposed to be acting like adults. Not once have these people acted like adults and spoken to me in a respectful manner, and I find that very appalling.”

She became emotional as she explained that two of her dogs had also been killed.

In 2012, a necropsy found that her dog Duke had been poisoned with anti-freeze. Cuthbert still does not know who is responsible.

Another dog died in 2013 after eating urinal cakes the Salingers said they placed against the fence to offset smells from the property, the court heard.

In November 2016, six residents – the Selingers, Landfried, the Angerers and Gerry Mcgraw – filed a lawsuit in Yukon Supreme Court to shut down the rescue operation and prevent Cuthbert from keeping any dogs on her property.

The case is scheduled for a three-day trial beginning Sept. 20.

Currently, there is no legislation outlining the number of dogs that can be kept on rural properties in Tagish or when they need to be indoors.

But according to case law, if the rescue is proven to be a nuisance, it does not matter whether its use is lawful.

“I don’t believe this shelter survives in its current form through a full hearing of this matter,” said Lang.

The likely outcome will be a permanent cap on the number of dogs between none and 10, he added.

Cuthbert, however, said that if the rescue is shut down, the community would return to major dog-to-human confrontations.

“Nobody wants to see another issue like Ross River,” she said, referencing the case of a young man fatally mauled by stray dogs in October 2015.

“That’s unacceptable in this day and age.”