Highpoint Paws & Purpose

09/01/2026

I’m so blessed not only to work with animals, but also in an operating room where I get to see these techniques and most up-to-date sciences in real time. The treatment for burns is so fascinating.

In December 2017, California veterinarians sewed sterilized tilapia skins onto the burned paws of two black bears rescued after the Thomas Fire.

Both adult females had suffered severe burns in the fire that swept Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The younger bear arrived at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife laboratory in Rancho Cordova on December 9 with third-degree burns across all four paws. Another of the bears had been found sitting with her feet in a stream, apparently unable to move comfortably because of the pain.

CDFW veterinarian Deana Clifford brought in Jamie Peyton, a UC Davis specialist in pain management. Peyton initially thought injuries this serious could take four to six months to heal. That created a problem almost immediately. Treating burns normally means repeated cleaning and bandage changes, each one requiring close handling or sedation of an animal they eventually intended to release. The bears were also reluctant to eat medication hidden in food. Keeping them captive for months carried its own risk of habituating them to people.

Then veterinarians discovered that the older bear was pregnant.

CDFW did not want her giving birth inside its holding facility. The lab was not designed for a bear to den and deliver a cub, and Clifford was concerned that the stress of confinement could cause the mother to reject it. The treatment schedule suddenly had a deadline set by the bear herself.

Peyton remembered reports from Brazil describing sterilized tilapia skin used as a temporary biological covering for human burns. Tilapia skin contains large amounts of collagen and can protect damaged tissue while new skin forms underneath. The technique had not previously been used this way on animals in the United States. Peyton's team obtained the fish, removed and sterilized the skins, and sutured pieces directly over the bears' damaged paw pads.

The response was visible almost immediately. Before treatment, the bears had been sitting with their injured feet held off the ground. After the fish skin was applied, one of the first things the younger bear did was stand.

For Peyton, that was evidence that the animal was finally comfortable enough to put weight on her paws again. The bears also received other pain and wound treatments, including cold laser therapy, electrical nerve stimulation, acupuncture and a specially prepared burn salve. Peyton later emphasized that the whole treatment program contributed to recovery, although the largest improvement followed the application of the tilapia skins. Within weeks, new tissue had grown across the paw pads.

Tilapia are warm-water freshwater fish native to Africa and parts of the Middle East, although today they are farmed for food around the world. The species used for burn treatment was Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, one of the most widely raised farm fish on the planet. Its skin is normally discarded during processing, but researchers in Brazil found that it contains large amounts of well-organized collagen, holds moisture well and adheres closely to a burn wound. Once cleaned and sterilized, the otherwise unwanted fish skin could be turned into a temporary biological covering while damaged tissue healed underneath

The bears were not completely healed when the time came to leave.

On January 18, 2018, both animals were placed into separate artificial dens in Los Padres National Forest wearing satellite collars. Their paws were not completely healed when they left captivity, so the collars became the next part of the experiment.

The answer came over the following months. Both bears recovered well. GPS data eventually showed them walking hundreds of miles on the paws that had been badly burned only months earlier. The younger female was photographed in an avocado orchard in May looking healthy and immediately ran from the person who spotted her. The older bear was found in good condition after wandering into Montecito in April and was returned to the hills above Ojai. Eight months after their release, both were still alive and moving normally.

The pregnancy had a less certain ending. Wildlife officials never found evidence of a cub with the older female. They could not tell whether she had lost the pregnancy or given birth to a cub that later died.

The same idea was already being tested on people in Brazil. Clinical trials later found that sterilized Nile tilapia skin worked as a temporary biological dressing for second-degree burns, adhering closely to wounds and reducing the number of dressing changes. In one randomized trial, patients treated with tilapia skin also healed slightly faster and required less pain medication than those receiving conventional silver-sulfadiazine treatment.

Image is for illustration purposes only

Source: UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine / California Department of Fish and Wildlife / Jamie Peyton / Deana Clifford / Amy Quinton, UC Davis News.

08/26/2026

*Calling all dog and cat owners!* The Applied Animal Behavior & Welfare Lab at Virginia Tech is currently gathering insights from pet owners of at least 1 dog and 1 cat to help us learn more about the relationships between pets inside and outside the home.

Survey Details:
Time Commitment: The brief survey should only take 5–10 minutes to complete!

Who should respond? We are looking for pet owners who have owned both 1 or more dogs and 1 or more cats for at least a month.

Confidentiality: Any data collected during this research study will be kept confidential by the researchers.

Benefits: By participating in this study, you will be helping us better understand the connections between dogs’ behavior towards cats inside the home, cats outside the home, and other small mammals. Additionally, as a thank you for your time, you will be entered into a drawing for a $25 Chewy gift card.
Interested in participating? Please scan the QR code in the flyer or follow the link to complete our survey! https://virginiatech.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Ye0OTsSiAa0Jue

08/14/2026

I will be selling a lightly used Rock Creek Kennel, 48” collapsible in sage green, with IATA travel guard for the door. Door panel has been replaced, kennel just needs a good cleaning (which I will do!) $700, RVA pickup only. Pictures to come.

Also will be selling a G1 Ruffland XL front and back door kennel, very lightly used (car kennel). Will be cleaned also prior to DOWNTOWN RVA pickup. $500

06/25/2026

A GREAT infographic from one of my favorite Canicross companies! Might have to print this bad boy for the front door!

Not every day is an adventure day🌡️ With temperatures rising, it is important to check the heatstroke risk, adjust your plans, and keep a close eye on your dog in warm conditions.

⚠️ If you suspect heatstroke:
- Move your dog to a cool, shaded area
- Rapidly cool them with cold water
- Contact your veterinarian immediately

Stay safe and always put your dog first 🐕☀️

Please note: this is a general guide. Heatstroke risk can vary significantly between dogs and environments. Factors such as fitness, health, humidity, activity level, and what temperatures and conditions a dog is accustomed to can also influence heat tolerance.

06/22/2026

Finding an ethical breeder who explains these fascinating coat genetics (and who breed-health tests, OFAs, ENS/Puppy Culture) is harder than you think! But, knowing the reason ✨why✨your dog’s coat changes can help you know what to expect.

One of the most common sources of confusion in Poodle color genetics is the difference between clearing, fading, and holding color.

Although all three result in a dog appearing lighter or darker over time, they are driven by different genetic mechanisms and produce very different outcomes.

🔹 Clearing is a genetically programmed color transformation, most commonly associated with the progressive greying gene. Examples include black puppies maturing into blue or silver adults, and brown puppies clearing to café-au-lait or silver beige.

🔹 Fading is the gradual loss of pigment intensity over time. This is most commonly observed in red-spectrum colors, where a deep red puppy may mature into a lighter red, apricot, cream, or nearly white adult.

🔹 Holding refers to long-term color stability. Dogs that hold color retain much of their original pigmentation throughout life, showing minimal change from puppyhood to adulthood.

Understanding which phenomenon you are observing is critical when evaluating breeding stock, predicting adult color, and planning future pairings.

Which of these have you observed most often in your own lines: clearing, fading, or strong color holding?

06/19/2026

What an incredible job for such incredible little friends! I love seeing the versatility of positive reinforcement amongst species. The greatest benefit of rats sniffing for old landmines is opening thousands of acres of farmland to those in less-well-off areas. No farms, no food. More farms, more food!🐀🌾🧑🏻‍🌾

06/16/2026

We love non-traditional livestock guardians! Very true about how the b***os have survived the wild on their own, the only thing that has changed is what they are protecting.

In 2023, researchers at the University of Wyoming took four wild b***os straight off federal rangeland in California, placed them among sheep, and tested whether an animal the government had been struggling to give away could work as a coyote deterrent.

Two of the four bonded with the flock within weeks and stood guard with eleven times the vigilance rate of the sheep around them. One had to have her entire pasture redesigned before she would stay.

The study was the first controlled test of wild BLM b***os as livestock guardians, and the animals that arrived unbroken and unadoptable turned out to already know the job.

We covered guard llamas on this page. The principle is actually identical. A solitary animal from a non-prey species is placed among sheep, adopts them as its herd, and attacks anything canid-shaped that approaches. Llamas do it through an innate hatred of canids inherited from South American wild dogs. B***os do it through territorial aggression and a body that can stomp, kick, bite, and chase a coyote until it leaves or dies.

A mature b***o weighs 400 to 500 pounds, runs faster than a coyote in a straight line, and has a kick that can shatter bone. Ranchers across the West have used domestic donkeys as flock guards for decades. Nobody had tested whether a wild b***o straight off the range could do the same job without domestication.

The study was led by John Derek Scasta at the University of Wyoming's Laramie Research and Extension Center and published in the Sheep & Goat Research Journal in 2024. The four b***os were jennies, all female, removed from BLM land in California under the federal wild horse and b***o management program. They arrived at the research station with no exposure to sheep, no training, and no social bond to anything except each other and whatever herd structure they had maintained on the range.

Integration took roughly five weeks overall, but the individual differences were enormous. B***o 7092 figured it out fast. Within days she was positioning herself in or near the sheep flock during more than ninety percent of observations. She grazed where the sheep grazed. She moved when they moved. She watched the perimeter while the sheep fed with their heads down. Her vigilance rate averaged 25.7 percent of observed activity. The sheep she was guarding averaged 2.2 percent. One animal in the flock was scanning the horizon more than eleven times as often as everything else in it.

B***o 7107 was the opposite. Placed in a large 640-acre pasture with complex terrain, she drifted. She walked toward roads, toward cattle in adjacent fields, toward horses, toward water points at the edge of the property. She showed no interest in the sheep. Researchers pulled her out and moved her to an 18-acre meadow with thirty ewes and one ram. A smaller space, a simpler landscape, fewer distractions. She bonded within five days. The pasture size had been the problem, not the b***o.

During the study, a neighbor reported seeing a coyote inside a pasture that contained a donkey-guarded flock. No sheep were killed. In flocks without integrated donkeys, two sheep were lost to depredation. The researchers were careful not to overstate the sample. They wrote that future work was still needed to prove direct predator reduction in working ranch systems. But the pattern was there.

The BLM removes thousands of wild b***os from western rangeland every year. The animals go to adoption events, holding facilities, and in some cases to long-term pastures in the Midwest where they live out their lives at taxpayer expense. The program is expensive, controversial, and ongoing because the b***o population on public land exceeds what the range can carry. Most adopted b***os end up as pasture pets. Some end up in slaughter pipelines that the BLM has struggled for decades to close.

Four of them ended up in Wyoming guarding sheep. They arrived wild, numbered, and unbroken. Within five weeks, the ones that worked were standing watch over animals they had never seen before, scanning for predators they had always known how to handle, doing a job nobody had asked them to do until a researcher looked at a holding pen full of unadoptable federal b***os and thought: these animals already know how to survive coyotes. They have been doing it their entire lives on the range. The only thing that changed was what they were protecting.

Source: Scasta et al. (2024), "From Wild to Watchful: Integrating BLM Donkeys (B***os) for Sheep Ranch Protection," Sheep & Goat Research Journal. USDA APHIS livestock protection guidelines. BLM Wild Horse and B***o Program.

06/02/2026

Happy Pride month from us here at Highpoint ❤️