From:
"Tracy Whitford"
Date: 2007-01-11 04:36:52 UTC
Subject: RE: [ferrethealth] Something Different
To: <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
Dear MC and all.
I'm so sorry not to have replied sooner, but the post came at an awfully hectic time in the semester.
I lost my beloved Cubby to splenic torsion when she was only 3.5 years old. Her spleen was quite enlarged, probably due to inflammation from a benign stomach tumor that had been successfully removed with complete recovery the previous year.
I was away for the weekend when Cubby got sick and I feel awful that I wasn't there. Apparently she became very lethargic at the sitter's. The sitter kept a close eye on her for awhile, decided that she wasn't getting better, and took her to the veterinary emergency hospital. The timing couldn't have been worse- the vet was in surgery to save the life of a dog that had been mauled by a bear and Cubby died before he could help her. A necropsy showed that her speen had become twisted so that its blood supply was blocked.
>From what I can gather, splenic torsion is uncommon in ferrets. I did not do a throrough literature review, but have spoken to vets and ferret owners, and no one had seen it in a ferret. It's apparently not uncommon in dogs though, and occurs more frequently in large chested breeds.
Cubby was a very stocky little girl. She weighed about 3 lbs, about a pound more than my other girls, and she had huge paws. Her face was much more blunt than any of my other females. She may have been from Path Valley Farms, while all my other ferrets have been from Marshall. I've wondered if there's any connection between her stocky body shape and the spenic torsion as seems to be observed in dogs. Mostly I just miss her.
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