Hi,
 
I'm new on here, thanks to one of my co-workers, Dan, who told me about
this group.  Happy days for an inexperienced ferret owner.  The name's Rob
Adlers, and I have two Sable females Mindy, and Gabby, who are both less
than 1/2 a year old.
 
Mindy was purchased from PJ's Pet Centre in Etobicoke, just outside
Toronto's downtown core at Sherway Gardens.  They keep a regular stock of
ferrets supplied by a breeder who I believe is in Manitoba (I'll get the
name later FYI).  I must say that I am very happy with their service.  Not
many stores here carry ferrets, and not even the humane society knew much
about them.  Gabby was adopted from the humane society with no past
information on her other than that she had been de-scented and spade.  My
father calls Gabby "Pucky" because she talks too much and sounds like a 2
stroke motor when she walks around, like "puck-puck-puck".  She wasn't too
happy when I got her, was loosing a lot of fur, and doesn't know how to
relate to me or Mindy at times.  A month later, her fur is growing with
minimal loss, she's becoming more active, and we're (meaning Mindy and I)
still working on getting her to be more involved with us.  Mindy is very
good to her.  The "big sister".  Mindy likes to body slam her alot,
however, Gabby seems to like it-she lets her do it without any protests.
She didn't like it at first, and stood her ground against Mindy's playing
too rough.  Mindy took the hint.  This helped me as well, as she cut down
on the roughness on me too.  Thanks Gabby!
 
From what I've seen here, the standards implemented by most stores are to
spade/neuter and de-scent the ferrets. Thankfully, the quality standards of
the pet stores in the Toronto area have greatly improved in the last few
years, so my fear of purchasing from PJ's was minimal.
 
Ferrets are popular here in the greater Toronto area!  More than I realized!
My land lord has 2 ferrets and 6 cats.  And they're VERY well taken care of.
One is a black-eyed white male, called Cinammon, and the other is a
chocolate sable female (can't remember her name).  My neighbour has a mighty
colour morphing white faced sable (?) female named Koki (or Cocoa).
Everytime I see her, she looks completely different.
 
Up near Barrie, north of Toronto, at my  cottage is  a Navy Blue eyed white
male ferret. I'm not kidding. Beautiful eyes on that one. He'd drive the
female kits wild...I'll see if I can upload a picture of him onto the WWW
site when I get a shot of him.
 
Nuff for now. Will be at the Toronto ferret event next Thursday.
 
Ciao!
 
Rob, Mindemeister and the Gabster...
[Posted in FML issue 1296]