Hi everybody!
 
I saw a couple of questions about ferrets biting till blood comes out... My
experience is that ferrets don't bite without a reason!  Ferrets from a
shelter or a petstore... Nobody knows where they lived before the shelter or
the petstore.  Nobody knows what they went trough since the day of their
birth.  Maybe they were mishandled, maybe they are not used to human's
hands.  Only the fert knows, and he can't speak human's language.  If you
have such a ferret, be sure that he/she is not in pain, let the vet check
everything out.  Than you can check out by yourself if your ferret is
mishandled.  Check the following list:
 
1. Is the ferret playing/attacking another ferret too rough?    yes/no
2. Is the ferret eating like he/she is starving every day?      yes/no
3. Was the ferret very skinny (bones + fur) when you adopted him/her?
                                                                yes/no
4. Wave your hand above your ferret's head. Is his/her reaction
   easily frightened?                                           yes/no
5. The ferret does not understand the meaning of toys           yes/no
6. Is the ferret acting overreacted in every way?               yes/no
 
When you can answer 3 or more questions with "yes" it can be quiet sure that
you have a frightened fert who is mishandled or threatened bad by earlier
owners.
 
We had (still have) 3 rescue-ferrets.  In the first months we had them, the
only thing they could do was eating, pooping and bite a lot and very, very,
very hard.  Boy, if you all could see our hands during that time!  Thick
gloves didn't work, they bit though it and still could make our hands bleed.
Everybody told us to go to the vet to let him give them their final
injection.  But we did not want to do that.  These 3 girls (at that time 4),
every time they attacked us again, I saw the fear and pain in their eyes.  I
knew that there were good ferrets behind the scary mask they used to wear.
 
They just weren't able to trust us.  How could we kill 4 little ladies
because they had a bad time and reacted that way!  They wanted to trust us,
because they already figured out that they got their food on time, we gave
them so many food that they could not eat it all.  We did that to show them
that we are allright, that there was no change to starve from hunger!  There
was (is) food all the time.  It took months of patience, inflammationed
fingers, plasters, and trying it and try it again..... Of course there was a
lot of stress in our house.  We could not let the biting ferrets play
together with our ferrets.  Just too dangerous.  So it took a whole evening
to let everybody play.  And of course our hands hurted badly.  Of course we
were sometimes afraid of them!
 
But after a couple of _months_ they were beginning to trust us a little bit!
We were able to pick them up (still with gloves)!  After that time we
started walking in the livingroom with a frightened fert in our hands.  We
walked, walked, and talk to them.  Little gentle silly words.  We told them
not to be afraid, we wont hurt them, there was food enough, their behavior
was no longer necessary to survive... etc.etc.  I don't think they
understood the words we told them, but it makes them feeling more
comfortable.  Punishing did not work with this ferrets.  It makes them bite
even harder... Every time a ferret started to chew on our fingers again, we
putted her back on the floor and ignored her.  So we turned the situation
around for them.  Biting, attacking and chewing ment attracting our
attention to them.  It was not the good attention, but they had our
attention!  Now the situation was different for them: Every time they chewed
on our fingers, they got nothing, our attention for them was gone!  But when
they were in our hands or playing with us on the floor with a ball or
something, they got our attention!  It took them more than 6 months to learn
this:
 
1.) chewing=no attention=not funny
 
2.) not chewing=attention=very funny!
 
The ferret and his/her human both have a mayor thing to do; The ferret has
to learn new thing and has to forget his/her old habits/attitudes. The
human has to be patience and ready to teach the ferret the same thing every
day, over and over again.....
 
But when everything is survived and the ferret's behavior is finally
correct, you have a relationship with that ferret that nobody can break!
People who told us that we must give this ferts their final injection are
astonished when they see how everything goes now.
 
I understand that this worked out fine with MY ferrets.  I don't say that it
will work with YOUR ferrets.  Give it a try.  Don't expect too much from
your ferret.  You don't know what he/she went trough before he/she came to
your house.  Be patience.
 
Everything I wrote in this (far too long) letter is our own experience.  We
have ferrets for 4 years now, and we went trough a lot with them.  I never
want to loose them, I love them all very much.  My biting rescue-ferrets are
healthy happy ferrets now.  They can play with us, they can play with the
other ferrets as well, they don't bite anymore.  So this story has a happy
ending.  But it was a very long story!
 
I hope that I helped somebody with writing this story to the FLM.  I would
like to know if there are more people who tried to do the same thing with
biting ferrets.  How did it work out?
 
Well, that's it for now, sorry BIG, for this far too long letter!
 
Lizzy: " Yes, we are still chewing!"
Juultje: " We are now chewing our food!"
Babetje: "We can chew our food very good!"
 
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~~Hugs and Dooks from Angilique and her Jumpin' Nine! ~~
                     [log in to unmask]
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[Posted in FML issue 1700]