Recently, We sent some copies of our forms we use for another shelter to go
over and use if they wanted to.  she e-mailed me back with questions about
our clause # 3 in our adoption Agreement which states in part "That I will
not allow this ferret to come by any means into the hands of, or anyone
connected in any way with the owners, trainers or breeders of racing
greyhounds."
 
First, this does not refer to retired racing greyhounds.  We have a few
clients who have retired racing greyhounds that have demostrated to both
parties satisfaction that they will not harm the ferrets.  Not all racing
greyhounds are trained with ferrets.  But, sadly, some are, as ferrets
are faster and more agile than rabbits.  They are very good for mobility
coordination training for the racing greyhounds.  Shelters for ferrets are
sometimes a cheaper alternative to buying ferrets in a store and for that
reason, we refuse to allow any persons connected to the greyhound racing
industry from owning one of our fuzzies.  Trust me on this.  Their are so
many whackos out there that don't even have the grasp of the concept of
compassion for animals.
 
We recieve calls from ranchers all the time wanting our ferrets so they can
turn them loose and eat all the prairie dogs on their ranches.  Jus two
weeks ago, a lady here in Colorado sent me an e-mail wanting a ferret cuz
she heard they were good mousers and she had a lot of mice in her house.
Last year, a guy came to my front door with a plastic bag of freshly killed
prairie dogs, wanting to see if my ferrets would enjoy eating them.  I was
horrified as some of them were still bleeding.  I advised him that he has
just endangered every ferret in my shelter by bringing those poor, but
dead little critters to my shelter.  Almost all the prairie dog colonys
are infected with sylvatic plague and some could be carriers of rabies.
Although they can't bite anymore to infect anything, this guy had the gall
to come to us with this bag of dead critters.  I just let him know that
if was still in my presence in 5 seconds, he would be arrested for
tresspassing.  Be careful of the motives of those wanting to adopt yur
ferrets or buy them from you, you might just read or hear about something
horrible that was done to them.
 
Hugs to all,
Ferretguy
[Posted in FML issue 3174]