Shelter fights are nothing new.  My memory right now is a bit short
circuited by not having enough sleep for a few nights, so I definitely
will miss some common causes.
 
Sources of confusion which I can recall feeding into such difficulties
in the past on the outsider's level:
 
1. People don't understand how to separate people's private lives from
their shelter lives so they get upset if the shelter people have as good
or nearly as good lives as others of their same age bracket in their
section of the country.  This can be increased if the observer is in an
area of the nation like our's where housing costs are so high that even
with high incomes people can't afford living conditions anywhere near
as nice as people in other areas, or when being at a distance leads to
incorrect assumptions of life style.  (That doesn't only happen with
shelter arguments, either.  Twice I had ferret people who harassed me due
to their assumptions about my race, and one other treated me badly due
assumptions about my religion.  I didn't correct the assumptions; if the
people are going to be that narrow they don't deserve the time of day,
but hopefully they'll later earn themselves the light of it.  There used
to be someone who would pretend to be me; the person apparently knew that
Steve has a doctorate so assumed medical and assigned a life-style to the
imaginary "me" which we'll never have without money falling from the
sky.) Honestly, think about it, when posts are read it is easy to assume
all sorts of things or to shade a word.  For some here "home" means a
mansion or mini mansion or multiple homes, to others it is free standing
home or a townhouse, to us it is a small condo, to yet others it is a
trailer, an apartment, a studio apartment, or a rented room.  At least
one member lives in a houseboat and I knew someone who lived on a 20'
boat which he also used for part time after hours work.  It's easy to
shade a word with what we ourselves have experienced, or assumed, or
desired without knowing what is different.  For me the word "backyard"
can trigger joyful imaginings of fruit trees, berries, lilacs, wisteria,
mock orange, Carolina Sweet Shrub, a large herb garden, bulbs, a pond,
bird feeders, a picnic bench, hammocks, and a swing.  That comes of not
having a backyard.  LOL!
 
2. Medical costs vary with conditions, and shelters are often likely
to get in ones with serious medical problems or in their old ages when
multiple medical problems can arise.  This is something people who are
new to ferrets often don't know, or they naively assume a different
range.  We've found that the typical ferret these days seems to run us
about $5,000 over the lifetime now.  It used to be 3 k and probably still
is in some other parts of the country.  Our single most expensive one
ran us $11,500 over his lifespan, and there are folks here on the FML
who have ones who ran more; I know that for a fact.  Hey, it happens.
 
3. The most common source of confusion I have seen in multiple past
fights was confusion from rumors.  Usually there would be a disagreement
and then others would change the story as they passed it around and the
further the story got from the two principals the worse the changes were.
When people took sides it got especially bad.  Sometimes those stories
would feed back to the original parties.  If they also believed rumors
instead of realizing that the rumor mill changed things drastically they
would get even more angry.
 
At least three times I have seen an outside flame-baiter CREATE such
rifts by saying that a fight was going on when it wasn't and just baiting
people into taking sides.  Then if people did take sides and if the named
participants (who had not been fighting) were gullible enough to believe
what the other supposedly said about them instead of checking directly
with the other person then true war broke out.  I've had someone try to
create a fight with another person and me that way.  Instead of fighting
we talked together and with that list's wonderful moderator and posted
notes of our own saying the person was a flame baiting you-know-what who
was trying to create a fight where none existed, and even then some third
parties just had to jump in and "take sides" when there weren't any
sides, but that was diligently controlled.
 
BTW, in case you don't know there ARE groups (usually of young males
though the claimed identity can be anything and it's not always young
males doing it) who actually have their own competitions to see who can
create the biggest on-line fights, or if they can keep on-line fight
going past a certain time frame by fanning the flames.  They set up
others and don't care who many get hurt or how badly, or even if they
destroy a list (unless they get extra points from destroying a list).
 
At least twice I have seen situations in which that tactic was used by
animals abusers to damage the cooperation of shelters who had both been
working together to stop or legally challenge the abuse.
 
Ferrets are now something like a 2 Billion Dollar industry in the U.S.
according to Ken Wells of the Wall Street Journal (I t may be 3, but I
think 2 and I don't have time to check now); that is pretty well main
stream.  It's time that a number of aspects become more mainstream.  It
is time for vet schools to teach more about ferrets.  It is time for
more of the products to carry less of a mark-up (though food will always
remain higher because ferret foods just are more expensive to make with
their higher meat and fat levels).  It is time for sheltering to be more
mainstream as well, with more and more cooperative interactions between
current private ferret shelters and their local humane groups leading
toward the humane groups doing the sheltering and the fund raising
eventually and with the current private shelterers becoming their experts
on ferrets, their rehabbers, and their fostering homes for ones who need
special care for a while.  We have all known and spoken for a very long
time now (at least ten years) about how the ability to fund ferret
shelters was getting harder and harder, and how someday it will be
prohibitive with the existing private shelter mode if it keeps up like it
has.  We have also spoken here often about how some shelters have simply
wound up having to close their doors to new arrivals or have sub-standard
care due to funding and time shortages.  It is time to mainstream; heck,
in many areas it is past time to mainstream.
[Posted in FML issue 4525]