TO JODI (SHE-WHO-IS-CLUELESS):
 
Here is a clue.  While your carpet shark is still young, EVERY time he nips
even a little bit, flick his nose right away, even if only lightly.  Then,
quickly scruff him and flick his nose HARD.  You want to be able to HEAR the
sound of the <pop> on the nose.  It is important that you are, above all,
consistent while he is still young.  Even a little nip is punished.  He can
learn how far he can go later.
 
Second clue.  After a nose flick, _DO_NOT_ put your fuzzy down right away.
Keep him scruffed for a while and then put him in his cage.  If he doesn't
have a cage, improvise.  Ferrets have a very poor short term memory, but a
very good long term memory.  You want to play to that long term memory.  Give
them time to remember the punishment before letting them out to play again.
Five or ten minutes should be enough cage time.  It works.  Give it a week.
Ferrets are generally fast learners.
                                        ___          ___
                                |\  |  /   \  |\  | |
We have seven carpet sharks and | \ | |     | | \ | |--  of them bite for any
                                |  \|  \___/  |  \| |___
reason.  I can wrestle with them, trade attacking each other, reach into
their hidey holes when they are playing and other such no-no's and NEVER get
bit.  What's more, _YOU_ could do the same thing with them.  Yes, they play
with their mouth open and they may put their teeth on me when we wrestle, but
they NEVER clamp down and they don't nip.  I just took all seven with me to
the Texas Association of Magicians Convention over Labor Day weekend, where
they were all handled to the point of exhaustion by hundreds of strangers.
Not a single biting incident.
 
Two of our kits were real canibals as babies.  I don't think that they were
trying to hurt me.  They were just having too much fun being alive to pay
attention to such trivial things as what is between their teeth when they
clamp down.  But, consistency paid off.  Even those two are now perfect
little angels when they are out in public.
 
(By the way, I thought that it was Hillary that was "She-who-is-clueless".)
 
SHOWING FERRETS TO TODDLERS:
 
We only show Arnie to toddlers.  He is 9 months old and weighs in at over
4.5 lbs. and a toddler cannot get his/her fingers far enough around him to do
any harm.  Besides, he is the best cuddler of all of our little carpet sharks.
Imagine a 2 or 3 year old trying to hold a ferret that is almost as long as
he/she is high.  It has everyone ROFLTAO.
 
LOW PRICED FERRET FOOD:
 
Try "Whiskas EXPERT Kitten Food".  It has a high MEAT PROTEIN content and
Taurine and most of the other good stuff that SD or IAMS has.  The regular
Whiskas (Not EXPERT) does not have nearly as much of the generally accepted
nutritional ingredients.  We will use it once in a while when we run out of
Wysong and cannot get to the pet store.  I personally believe that it is
probably a good idea to change their diet once in a while.
 
FUNNY STUFF (LSHIFDAMF - Laughing So Hard I Fell Down And Missed the Floor):
 
Our girls have a maze of 3 inch clear plastic and thin-wall PVC joints.
Arnie (named for Arnold Shwartzenagger (sp) because of his size - 4.5 lbs.)
has a similar maze of 4 inch tubing.  The other day, Arnie managed to get his
head and part of his body part way through a 3 inch 45 degree PVC joint that
was laying loose on the floor and he could not get free.  He ran all over the
upstairs trying to get it off.  I would have helped him sooner, but I was
laughing too hard.  After about 15 minutes, he came panting over to me and
gave me his best "I need to be picked up" look.  I slid the PVC off and Arnie
immediately cuddled up and went to sleep in my lap.  Hey!  He worked hard.
 
Well, that's about all for now.
 
-----------------
"Cats may be cool, but carpet sharks rule!"
 
John Gaver ([log in to unmask])
 
[Posted in FML issue 0602]