Hello Everyone;
 
A few months ago I rescued six ferrets.  Two females and four males.  I
kept the oldest ferret myself, a female.  The little girl I kept(Crystall)
was somewhere between 8 and 8 1/2 years old.  She was a little Marshall
Farms girl.  When I took her to my vet he said that I was very lucky to
have a Marshall Farms ferret that lived that long
 
To get on with this, I had to have little Crystall put down tonight.  I
came home tonight and poor little Crystall was having a terrible time
breathing.  She was panicking.  I watched her for a while.  She could not
eat, she could not drink any water and she could not relax enough to go
to sleep.  And her breathing seemed to be more labored.
 
I called the vet(8:30 P.M., past office hours).  The vet called me back
about ten minutes later and said he would meet me at the clinic in about
thirty minutes.  When I met him there he checked her temp and listened to
her chest.  Said he needed to get an x-ray of her chest and heart area.
After he took the x-ray he put little Crystal in a small cage and gave her
pure oxygen.  The x-ray showed that she had a lot of fluid on her lungs(I
can read the x-rays for myself), her heart was pushed out of place(by the
fluid)and the x-ray also showed that her kidneys were smaller than they
should have been.  Also Crystal was having problems with her back legs due
to arthritis, she had gone totally deaf and she was developing cataracts
in her eyes.
 
I could have spent a lot of money to keep her alive for another month.  But
her quality of life would not have been very good to say the least.  My
only other option was to have her put down.  Since I sometimes rescue and
have seven others of my own(some with medical problems), and other reasons
that I have already touched on, I opted to have her put down.
 
I feel in my heart that I did the right thing for her.  Even though I only
had her for a very short time(5 months), I still loved her so very much.
 
Sandee, please look after my little Crystall for me.  You can't miss her.
She is a very little albino, she has two blue tattoos in her right ear.
 
Thank you all for listening to my very long and sad letter.
Donna
[Posted in FML issue 3120]