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Paula Ray, owner-operator of the nonprofit Karuna Animal Rescue Sanctuary in Kneeland, was making her usual late-night rounds on Saturday (or early Sunday, technically) when she encountered some unwelcome intruders: a pair of juvenile American black bears raiding the grain bins in her barn.

“They were startled,” she said in a phone interview this afternoon. “I was startled!”

On one level, Ray realized that the bears probably meant her no harm. (Black bears are typically shy, and attacks on humans are rare.) Still, they were pretty darn big — maybe 400-500 pounds, by her estimate — and they were cornered.

“So I tried to back out of the doorway,” Ray said. While backpedaling, however, she fell and twisted her knee. 

That’s when two pint-sized rescue dogs — an apple-headed chihuahua named Ashley and a fluffy white terrier mix named Bentley — leapt into action. 

“They jumped right in between me and these two bears,” Ray recalled. 

She remembers what happened next as if it played in slow-motion. The bears snatched the barking dogs into their mouths and violently flung them aside before scampering out of the barn. Despite being seriously injured, Bentley and Ashley quickly popped up and ran barking after the retreating bears.

Ray, limping on her twisted knee, found Bentley outside. He was badly hurt and hadn’t managed to get far. After loading the wounded Bentley into her vehicle, Ray searched until she found Ashley hiding under the pig house. She rushed both dogs to the emergency veterinarian on call at Arcata Animal Hospital, where they received care for roughly four straight hours.

Ashley, the chihuahua, had been bitten in the shoulder and chest, breaking her right scapula and causing nerve damage in her leg. Bentley suffered bite wounds on his back and right leg and a deep, claw-scrape gash along his left shoulder that separated the top layer of skin from the muscle.

“They have some pretty horrific wounds,” Ray said.

Both dogs will require surgery, and in a social media post, Ray called on the community to help cover the existing medical bills (nearly $5,000) as well as cost of their upcoming procedures. (Ray said she may have found an orthopedic surgeon in Santa Rosa who can perform the surgeries.)

“I think we’ve raised almost $6,000 since Saturday,” she said.

Karuna Animal Rescue Sanctuary opened in May 2021, and Ray said the plan was to just be a horse rescue. 

“But, you know, there are so many animals in need,” she said. “We have ended up with horses, llamas, goats, pigs, sheep, cows. We’ve had a yak, a lot of dogs. We’ve had birds. We’ve had a snake. We’ve had pretty much everything, and every time a new type of animal comes in, of course, we have to set up for that animal.”

The sanctuary is located on a sprawling ranch property up Greenwood Heights Drive Kneeland Road, tucked into the trees just below the open, rolling hills that dominate the top of the ridge. 

“The animals just kind of roam free,” Ray said. “It’s very beautiful.”

She and her fellow shelter operators had seen these two juvenile bears before Saturday. 

“I think these must be like last year’s bears or the year before, but they’re definitely together,” Ray said. “We’ve seen them come through. They’ve never bothered us, but this time … they got into that food room because there is a big opening at the very top of the wall, which now we’re closing.”

Ray said she has yet to seek medical attention for her twisted knee because she’s been busy “desperately” trying to raise funds and find a surgeon for her dogs. But she feels they deserve to be her top priority. 

I just know that if those dogs hadn’t been there, I would have been in the hospital,” she said. “And so, you know, everything these dogs need, they’re gonna get.”

Ray posted links to fundraising resources on her social media post. And she invited people to contact the rescue operation via its website. 

“We do huge picnics up here so people can come see what we’re all about,” she said.