Thank YOU Kristine for keeping a clear head, staying objective and open
minded through all of this.  You're approach to the situation helps all of
us.  Testing all your ferrets, and using more than one test was admirable.
I know this nightmare is still not quite ended, as you are continuing on
investigating this.  You have been so brave, honest, and so aggressive in
dealing with this situation and I for one am grateful to you and everyone
who helped you.
 
I wanted to take this opportunity to ask something of those of you that
had any ADV testing done recently, or were testing your ferrets right
along with Kristine.  I wanted to ask if you might do the following if
you were to post anything on the FML about your testing.
 
1) state how many out of how many ferrets were tested and with what tests.
 
2) did any of the results conflict with each other (for example did an
Avecon POCT come back differently then say United's CEP), or were any
inconsistent in of themselves (for example did an Elisa saliva test show
up neg on one date then neg on another).
 
3) If you had no problems and feel secure with the tests you used would
you say so for us.  If you had inconsistencies, would you please give
you're opinion as to which ones seemed to yeild the more consistent
results.  If you had tests on said ferrets in the past it would be nice
to have the same info to compare.
 
I am prompting this because when I read posts or emails about testing it's
in bits and pieces.  I can't see the whole picture that way and neither
can anyone else.  For example, if someone writes, "I got back 10 neg Elisa
(adv) tests"  I have no idea what the significance of that is or what that
says.  But if they have say 60 ferrets, it is useful to know if they only
spot tested 10.  It is important to know if they used any other tests, and
what that history is, etc..  Remember the more brief and direct posting of
something along the lines the better (its hard to follow someone writting
about "freddy" the ferret was tested, etc, and "snow" was tested, etc )
Maybe an example would be:
 
"I had 10 of my 10 ferrets tested all with Avecon POCT on 3/3/02.  I had
tested 3 of them with an Avecon Elisa saliva in the summer and the tests
are consistent with each other.  In addition I sent out blood for 10
ferrets to Untited for a CEP on the same day as the Avecon POCT was done
(3/302) and they were consistent, except for one.  Therefore for me all
tests were fairly consistent.  I have to venture to say that they are all
accurate.  I am retesting and following that one ferret that had one
inconsistency in the last CEP test."
 
Something like that.  You don't have to post the actual test results if
you don't want to.
 
Ugh.  I'm terrible at this stuff.  I hope I made some sense here and help.
 
Wolfy
 
Please visit:
http://www.geocities.com/wolfysluv/
for information on ferret deafness:
http://www.geocities.com/wolfysluv/deaf.html
[Posted in FML issue 3728]