From:
sukiec@optonline.com
Date: 2003-03-08 04:18:08 UTC
Subject: RE: My poor lil' Rolo
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <13676732.1047097088517.JavaMail.root@scandium>
The first step when we have one coughing is to have a chest x-ray done to see if there might be an infection or might be cardiomyopathy. Then we proceed from there, sometimes with an ultrasound, too. There may be further testing. If the ferret is not very ill looking or acting we personally still tend to have the x-ray done because we have had one with a very bad case of pneumonia and pleurisy show almost no symptoms. If you are lucky, though, it's just a bout of influenza or a sinus infection. (Ferrets don't get human rhinovirus colds, but each of these can seem like a cold to a person who has a mild infection.)
There are listings of vets available in URLs available in the Critical References Section of the http://www.ferretcongress.org. Each listing is unique so it pays to try each of them. Also, the listings of vets and of shelters in the Reference Shelf of the Files section at
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
should be of use.
These days there are many sources of info for vets as well as for the rest of us: veterinary texts on ferrets, consultants, websites by ferret expert vets, etc. so any vet should be able to get info pretty easily and learn a decent bit about ferrets.