>If you can find the time could you please explain on the FML just how
>to use scents to help blind ferrets navigate?
 
As you have noticed most ferrets aren't even slowed down by blindness, so
it can even be hard to notice that one is blind.  Sight is not terribly
important to them compared to other senses.
 
A few aren't so fortunate, or perhaps a room gets rearranged, or the
family moves and that causes navigation difficulties.  If the ferret is
very active that ferret might crash into things more than usual during
active romping.
 
What you do then is you take safe scents and simply dot them on obstacles
at ferret height.  Those scents alert the ferret that something is dead
ahead and the critter slows down.  (Some people label bedding with a set
scent and then put that around to be safe places to crash and to get
ferrets to not go to the bathroom in those spots.)
 
To help with navigation you can use different scents in different rooms,
and even different scents for two sides of a room.
 
Using our place as an example.  The living room might have lemon and
rose, the dining nook may have peach.  the kitchen lime and orange, the
hall spearmint, the bedroom cinnamon and vanilla, and the ferret room
peppermint (Ashling's absolute favorite) and apple.  The bathrooms tend
toward violet (since it also confuses senses of smell) and wintergreen.
The scents not only give her an idea of where obstacles are but they also
tell her where she is in the house, even if she takes a nap somewhere.
 
We are aware of the scents for a few days but the ferrets seem to know
they are there for as long as two weeks after application.
 
That help?
[Posted in FML issue 3776]