We need a bunch of Bridge greeters.

I am more sad than I can even express to tell you that distemper has
infected ferrets in our shelter.

I had wanted to hold off on posting publicly until we had more answers,
but I understand people are talking about this already, so I figured
I'd get as much straight information out as I can. I'll apologize for
not being as coherent as I should, but we're just barely hanging in
emotionally. It didn't help that this all blew up just before we had to
move the whole shelter last Saturday. We locked that down to a handful
of people to avoid risking any more ferrets.

We've traced it back to a ferret that came in from Animal Control. His
partner was euthanized on arrival because he had the classic distemper
symptoms, but Gumby didn't look sick. A little flushed, but that's it.
A "helpful" volunteer picked him up and delivered him in to the middle
of a cage bank mid-week, without notifying us. When we examined him,
he looked like he might have had flu (there's a lot of nasty flu going
around), and he got better. To this day, Gumby is just fine.

Then other ferrets started getting sick. Still not knowing about
Gumby's cage-mate, and given that some of the ferrets getting sick had
been vaccinated in December, we felt confident that it was flu and not
distemper... Till it started getting worse, and ferrets started
developing the crusty pads and gunky eyes and other symptoms of
distemper. It's been confirmed by two labs.

Once we knew what we were dealing with, we went through the shelter and
euthanized the sick ferrets. There's really no hope for them once they
get that sick, and believe me it's not doing them any favors to keep
them suffering longer.

We stepped out of the shelter to take a break from that, and looked up
to see a brilliant double rainbow over the shelter. It seemed like an
appropriate sign, and I hope those babies were greeted warmly.

We've also given booster vaccinations to all shelter and most foster
ferrets. I've spent over $1200 in vaccines this week alone.

The maddening thing is that there's just no pattern to it. Outside of a
few ferrets that had had reactions, the ferrets have been vaccinated.
There's no pattern to the cages where ferrets got sick. In one cage,
two ferrets got really sick and passed, while the third of the group
is completely healthy, bouncing off the walls.

Of course, we are completely closed and locked down until we've been
completely clean for longer than the incubation period (14 days) and
the vets have given the all-clear. That means that other shelters are
getting ferrets that we would have taken. Denise's Delightful Dookers
(www.washingtonferretdelights.org) has been a wonderful help.

What you can do to help:

1) I really would appreciate it if these sweet souls got a welcome at
the Bridge. There are some names that I don't have yet, and some are
likely passing tonight, but I have:

Sugar
Tinkerbell
Mocha
Bella
Lucky
Yoshi
Boomer
Loki
Rihanna
Madusa
Mercedes
Kendra
Dirk
Romeo
Juliet
Albie
Titus
Madison
Damien
Barbosa
Sinister
Qadesh

2) Please say a prayer not only for the rest of the ferrets, but for
the volunteers who have been working to save ferrets nonstop, and
whose hearts are broken tonight.

3) I know you've got questions, and this is a juicy bit of news, but if
you can give us space to grieve, it would really be appreciated. It's
not over yet either, so our priority is the ferrets in the shelter. If
you really need questions answered, please come directly to me:
[log in to unmask] and I'll give you all the answers we have.

4) Donations are always welcome, and between the move and this, we have
little in the way of reserves, but we'll make it.

Kevin Farlee
President
Washington Ferret Rescue & Shelter

[Posted in FML 7048]