I just wanted to give everyone an update on Dakota in hopes that it
may help another ferret.

Dakota had been sick for a long time. For almost all the time over the
last year or longer he has been more of a couch potato never one to
run around, jump, or play, he usually opted for a sleep sack or hammock
to rest in. He was always up and around when we handed out treats but
for the most part he only moved around to go eat, drink, look for a
new resting spot, and use the litter pan (or the area in front of the
litter pan). He was about 5 years old and he never looked like he was
ill. His stools ranged from normal to mud like, to diarrhea, to green
sometimes within the day 24 hours. We had in into the vet several
times his glucose was always normal. We were thinking that maybe he
had Lymphoma, IBD, or Food Alergy. One evening he looked really bad,
ataxic, walking kinda sideways, since the vet was closed and I was
afraid he may not make it to the morning I gave him some prednisone.
That seemed to help and we found nothing at the vets office. Over the
year and several trips to the vet office showed normal ultra sounds,
normal glucose, no lymphnode enlargement. He did have a couple stomach
bugs which he received antibiotics for. After the antibiotics he seemed
some better but then went back to his old ways of resting and not
playing.

Finally we decided to bite the bullet and expense and once and for all
find out what was going on. We did a complete blood work up and x-rays
then consider exploratory surgery. The blood work results were perfect
no clue that there was anything wrong at all. The x-ray showed maybe
one lung was more dense than it should be and while coming out of
anesthesia our vet heard for a minute a heart regurge and then it was
gone. Since the blood work didn't point anywhere we went and had a
cardiac ultrasound which showed a moderate to sever aortic regured with
mild left heart enlargement. This was something we would have to watch
but didn't account for his wanting to sleep instead of play. We went
back and gave him antibiotics for a pneumonia and he improved a lot. He
still wanted to sleep more than play but he would walk around and look
things over more than he had in quite a while and he was more alert and
had a bounce in his step. We thought after a year of inactivity maybe
he was just out of shape and as he moved around more he would gain
energy. After a few weeks he got worse and we decided to take him in
for a follow up. Since our schedules were very busy that week we waited
for the weekend (from Wed). On Saturday he was a lot worse. Our vet
didn't see anything on ultrasound, on lymphnode was enlarged but it
turned out to be fat. Lungs and heart sounded fine. He couldn't palpate
any problems and glucose was fine and no temperature. He did have green
bad smelling diarea when taking his temperature but he also had a
normal stool just after that. We decided to put him on two antibiotics
(and pepto for his stomach) for the weekend and then do exploratory
surgery the next week.

After I got him home we cleaned him up from the diarrhea and gave him
the first does of antibiotics and pepto he was a whole lot worse (bad
enough to make what he looked like at the vet good health). He didn't
want to eat anything even ferettevite. We decided to let him rest to
see if the med we gave him helped any. After an hour he still looked
as bad as before. He did try two or three licks of ferretvite and then
stopped and looked like he was trying to vomit. We had to take him to
the after hours clinic to help him over the bridge he was so bad we
could tell he wasn't going to make it and we didn't want him to suffer
any more.

We wanted to have an autopsy (necropsy) done but we made a mistake and
froze him. We didn't know that we were not suppose to do this because
it damages any tissue samples they take. We did have our vet do what he
could to find out what was going on, maybe it would help another ferret
somewhere.

We found that an exploratory would not have reveled anything he had a
pneumonia, his lungs hand lesions on them and even his heart had a
couple lesions. Since he never coughed or had a fever this pneumonia
must have been colonized (where the body doesn't recognize it as a
foreign organism and does not fight it).

We were blessed with him for almost two years he will be missed.

Mike

[Posted in FML 6515]