From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2012-03-13 21:17:02 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] New ferret(s)
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Vets and vet techs constantly tell us that our ferrets are the most gentle and trusting they have met. We use consistency and times out. Sometimes we also use a scruff, a hiss, or both. Mostly we work on building trust and shaping the ferrets toward desired behaviors which get highly praised and sometimes rewarded with a treat or special game.
If the ferret is deaf you can also use floor thumps and later even hand signs and exaggerated facial expressions. If partly deaf you can try naming favorite things of the ferret in different pitches to see if some of them can be heard and the word learned. One of ours who was a patched blaze could hear no high pitched sounds and would get a puzzled look on her face and put her hands on the mouth of anyone speaking too high as if she were trying to find if the person was talking. Ferrets with neural crest genetic variations such as KIT are more likely to suffer hearing loss. If the ferret has just a white head or white head blaze from kithood then Waardenburg is a possibility, but if there are extraneous white body patches with or without head ones then KIT is the more likely of the neural crest variations.
Our ferrets get to the point where they will comfortably stick body parts like their forepaws and heads into our mouths, and are otherwise fully trusting. (For some reason some of them find putting a little ferret hand into our mouths to be comforting if they are very worried by something.) When I lost a dental cap recently one of our ferrets insisted on licking the damaged remains and the gum, and when a tooth reappeared in a couple of days he looked very proud of himself as if his kisses had made fix.
At that age also check the teeth or other possible sources of pain, please. One of the ferrets who joined our family years ago was a chronic biter at a pet store and one of the people there had actually broken her tail throwing her after a bite, so I gave her a look over and found a deciduous canine turned on its side and entrapped, which was immediately easily removed with some forceps, and just blew pus when it came out. She looked startled, then she looked pleased, covered my face with kisses and never bit anyone again. Obviously, she had to come home and stay with us then. That was Meeteetse who was spoken about on All Things Considered multiple times because she loved the voice of one of their science reporters and would insist on kissing the speakers.
We had another whose dental arcade was too small for the full component of teeth and a molar wound up coming through his palate, requiring removal. At that time Path Valley was breeding for short faces but got them too short. (They also wound up with some of them having achrondoplastic dwarfism and more, and we wound up with one of those very compromised ferrets, too, who always had a load of health needs.)
>
You will likely already know if the ferret might have been abused and adjust accordingly if needed.
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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