Jeep came from Marshall Farms. Am sure there were no happy times in
that process for him, an animal factory. And then there was all this
transport between warehouses and dealers to that final store. Just a
whirl wind of confusion and unknown places, smells and experiences for
the animals absent of happy times. And then there is the sale of him
and again transportation and confusion in a well of strange things so
there again is not happiness, only defensive mechanisms which for sure
was demonstrated to me with the offering of the almighty bite.

But I managed to get past that fairly quickly by not reacting to the
nips and teeth in a negative way. Just retreating my hand which allowed
Jeep to control the 'meeting' of human hand and ferret. That worked
well. He now seeks out my hand where before he would cringe and seek
shelter away from that hand.

And now the best part of all. People wait for land marks in their human
babies like their first unassisted roll over, crawl and then the first
foot steps across the floor. With ferrets one such land mark is the
almighty dook. Yesterday Jeep was in a fit of happiness dancing on her
toe tips all over the cage from side to side front to back floor to
floor in an expanded war dance mode and then it happened, the dook!
Ha! At only 10 weeks this tiny little bundle of pure energy dooked!
Not just once but was a whole string of dooks during that dance. That
cracked me up to watch. For sure Jeep was telling me he was happy with
where he is and what had happened to him for once. That was kind of a
report card on me and I passed! Ha! I should ask for a raise!

This morning when I got up early just after sun rise as usual I first
checked on the animal. He was sleeping in his hidey box but slithered
out slowly to 'ask' for some TLC. I reached in and touched him, he
didn't draw back as he did in the first day/s. He instead turned and
buried his head in my hand as I stroked his body. He slowly inched over
to my arm where he rested his chin on my arm as I stroked him. This was
an excellent sigh, Jeep was telling me he was not afraid of me and he
was in fact happy to not only see me but to have the once feared hand
about and on him. More than that he was offering me his trust. What an
extreme compliment!

Now jeep has a way of making the whole house shake violently and we
need to work on that right away. He backs his butt up to a corner at
the top of a ramp between floors and then he fires off a load of poop.
When that poop hits the floor it makes the whole house shake. Not
sure how I can get him to use that litter box. Will work on it.

Gordon and Jeep

_12-2Addy CEO

[Posted in FML 7355]