To Genevieve and Cliff concerning abnormal urination:
 
> Our ferret Max has started urinating all over the place recently. He
>is four years old, and until recently he was pretty good about using the litter
>box; nowadays, when we let him out of the cage in the morning,
>he goes in the litter box, then he'll probably go on the floor two or three
>times in the next 30 minutes.
 
>We're going to have him checked out for UTI, but if it turns out to be a
>behavioural problem, do you (or anyone) have any suggestions as to how we could
>handle it?
 
        Genevieve,  I hope you don't accuse me of copping out on this one, but
there are probably many far more qualified epole on this list when it comes to
dealing with behavioural problems in ferrets.  Occasionally one of mine will
start using other places than the litter box for elimination.  The waay we
generally handle it is to find the culprit, and then monitor them very closely
when they wake up, and when they look like they have to go, then we take them to
the box and give them Linatone as a reward.  It generally takes several weeks to
get them "retrained", but so far, it seems to work.  I suppose you could put a
litterbox in the areas that they frequent, and slowly move it back over to the
proper place, but we haven't had as much luck with that...
 
        Males generally have a far smaller incidence of UTI's than females, due
to their anatomic differences.  I suspect, if you look at the majority of cases
such as your's, you're apt to find many more behavioural problems than UTIs.
However, due to the potentially serious nature of UTIs, we always should rule
them out first...
 
       Bruce Williams, DVM                 Department of Veterinary Pathology
       [log in to unmask]         Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
       (202) 576-2453/2454                 Washington, D.C.  20306-6000
 
[Posted in FML issue 0873]