The FML Silver Anniversary is coming!

Not terribly long after the FML began in Canada (first moderator, Chris
Lewis) and the U.S. (most members) we got a member in Sweden (Urban
Fredricksen) and then later one in England (Chris Lewis, was that
you?). Bill Gruber first joined as a member and then protector of
those in the FFZs since he provided the anonymity option for them,
then became the moderator. *****Was your becoming moderator about 19
years ago now, Bill?***** MANY years of service!
[Did not become fully run by me until late 1994. BIG]

>Date: Dec 21, 19:14 1987
>
>The long-awaited ferret mailing list ....
>
>Sorry to take so long, but job changes and other such stuff made it
>rather difficult to find the time to get this rolling. Now things
>have stabilized, I'm finally able to do something with it.
>
>List of Charter Members of the Ferret Mailing List:
> 
>    evans@mhuxt (Steve & Sukie Crandall)
>    [log in to unmask] (Tom Danisavich)
>    [log in to unmask] (Susan A. Musil)
>    tjs@tropix (Timothy J. Spires)
>    davis@utx1 (Gary A. Davis)
>    alan@sequent (Alan Gardiner)
>    [log in to unmask] (Leonard Bottleman)
>    [log in to unmask] (Shu-Ju Wang-Burgess)
>    [log in to unmask] (Janet L. Crow)
>    mnetor!uunet!vsedev!FMPMIS!scott (? - mail was mostly garbled)

Originally, there was net.pets which began with the earliest
configuration of the internet in the 1970s when people at national
labs and universities wrote code to let the early small computer
networks joining universities, national labs, military, and some major
industrial research labs like the old Bell Labs intertwine. The web did
not exist yet. Subsections of the lists arose and for pets Steve was
on for every ferret-relevant configuration from net.pets onward. He'd
bring home printouts and I would hand write comments that he would
later send from work. I guess we had our first home computer (only a
Sinclair) in something like 1982, our first Mac in 1984, and our first
personal dial-up connection in 1986.

The FML arose from net.pets.alt.ferrets and happened because we were
being harassed by people who did things like filling that list with
very bloody fake ferret recipes and worse. People got tired of it.
Then that list went away. Net.pets.alt.ferrets arose several times in
different configurations after that and died completely several times.

The rest of that FML 0001 Digest from which the header comes is what we
said, and as I recall all of us pretty much were novices back then and
still making the kinds of mistakes that people who have had ferrets
only a few years are bound to make, except then there also was almost
no information readily available so a lot of stupid mistakes were made
due to that, too. Steve and I had had ferrets for something like 5 or 6
years then. We had Smash before our first NJ permit because we did not
know about the permits till 1982.

The first ferret veterinary text did not come out till 1989. That was
the first edition of _Biology and Diseases of the Ferret_ edited by
James Fox of MIT's Dept. of Comparative Medicine. It was a thin, orange
book. I might still have my copy. There were a few non-health books
that were old and not good, in fact they were often very wrong and gave
us all bad advice.

Wendy Winstead's book which was the first reasonable general one was
not out yet. WW also bred, and our Fritter was one of hers. She was a
physician and song writer (who had a number of celebrity friends
because she was an excellent song writer), and convinced the
ferret-loving old owner of Marshall Farms to sell ferrets into the pet
market instead of just research(and he actually did care about ferrets
and their health, and financed the majority of work to improve ferret
health care early on). She also got Dick Smothers, David Carradine, and
some other celebrities to appreciate and own ferrets back then. WW died
way too young of a malignancy.

Products were different, and there were no ferret foods, just cat foods
and most of those which were sold anywhere were the cheap sorts.

There was not an approved rabies vaccine yet and the CDC work
understanding and documenting rabies safety for ferrets did not arrive
for another 10 years after that so many states and communities still
had ferrets being illegal, and even accusations caused them to be
destroyed for rabies testing pretty well anywhere. The CDC work got a
good chunk of its funding from FML members, and in just the first year
after that work led to improvement in the Rabies Compendium
http://www.nasphv.org/documentsCompendia.html more ferrets had already
lived because of not being destroyed in response to accusations than
had died in the studies.

Canine distemper vaccines were still the types grown in eggs so
allergic reactions were incredibly more common, and a person had to be
careful to use ones that were killed vaccines and not grown in ferret
cell lines or they would give ferrets CDV. Canine distemper vaccines
continue to improve, and these days a person can have titers done and
not give vaccines if the titer levels are high.

Very few fancy ferrets existed. Almost all were standards, both dark
and light, and some albinos.

Life spans diverged widely. Some people had ones who lived 10 to 14
years (rare, but 7 and 8 years was quite common and 9 was not unusual),
but some breeders had terrible genetics control with their ferrets
going only 2 years, and some store ferrets were from fur farms so bred
just for appearances and fur quality, and those sources both tended to
have short lives (only a very few years). They were almost the only
young ferrets with health problems except for some rare ones with JL.
Later people began breeding more fancies and at the same time many of
the health and longevity complaints increased markedly, especially for
ferrets who were younger than 6 years of age, but how much of that was
genetics and how much was other factors like green equipment lights
also playing a part and so on is an unknown.

It was not possible to find ferrets under 8 weeks of age in any pet
store until Path Valley began selling 5 and 6 week old ferrets to pet
stores and that pressured other farms which then sold pet ferrets
(Marshall, Colorado, etc.) to lower their sales ages. It gave the
stores more weeks to have cute kits for sale. Sales pressure is what
later led to an increase in fancies since they originally sold for more
money even though many of them were less healthy and some of them had
handicaps. That was when reports of young cases of adrenal disease
began appearing on lists.

Adrenal disease and insulinoma still needed to be understood -- heck,
if memory serves they still needed to be recognized when the FML began
almost 24 years ago -- though they were out there and the symptoms
discussed a bit -- they seemed much less common, and the first chemo
treatments for lymphoma in ferrets did not exist till later when Katie
Fritz (redshoes, different from Kathy Fritz) had a ferret for whom Dr.
Karen Rosenthal devised the first ferret lymph protocol long ago. I
think that was for Bandit Fritz if my memory serves.

Our first ferret with adrenal disease was Hjalmar in about 1993. His
was lymphoma which also was in his right adrenal and at that point we
were lucky enough to have a vet who had done a post-doc in exotics at
the AMC and then moved to our town and became a friend (only to leave
here years later when he wed a medical student who was in residency in
NYC) causing us to lose a truly splendid surgeon and diagnostician,
though we have good ones again.

Our first ferret with pancreatic disease was Fritter a few years before
Hjalmar but rather than it being insulinoma she had lymphoma in her
pancreas. She was one of the first ferrets on what was then a new med:
Lysodren, which is no longer used for ferret pancreatic disease because
it can cause as many serious problems for them as it addresses. The med
was so new that it was one of the ones where we had to talk with the
drug developers, and it was so rare that our vet had to make an
arrangement to get bottle dregs from a university hospital where it was
being tested. That was a different vet; we had a bit longer drive then
than our current one which averages about an hour to reach the vet
hospital.

Early in the FML there seemed to be fewer endocrinological illnesses
discussed (insulinoma, adrenal disease, etc), but more lymphoma
mentioned, and way more discussions of splenic disease including
ruptured spleens but that also was before Helicobacter was found and
treated and that can live in the spleen, causing inflammation, as well
as causing stomach ulcers.

The FML was the first internet ferret resource that wound up being
continuous. You are reading this on the REAL THING if you are on the
FML!

If you are reading on the FHL then know that the FHL was 10 years old
very early this year, and it will be fun to see if it also has another
15 years ahead for it.

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 7164]