Bryan,
Please don't give up on yourself or this ferret!! Everyone makes mistakes,
but this little fellow has been through so much, and he needs stability.
You have provided him this so far. EVERYONE relapses at some point. You
relapsed and so did he.
Let me share a quick story with you. We have 6 ferrets. 1, our albino, is
a serious biter. She started out biting everyone, including me. To this
day, she is 99% bite proof, when we stay within our limits. Faces and bare
skin is off limits to her. My husband has a VERY short fuse. One day
before we learned to keep her away from our faces, he put his little face up
to hers to say hi and she nailed him on the nose - ripping his nostril in
half. Needless to say, he almost popped her neck off. I pryed his hands
off of her neck and put her back in the cage until everyone cooled off - she
was scared to death and he was in total shock and pain. There was blood
everywhere! He SERIOUSLY considered giving her away at this point. My
heart couldn't stand it though becuase she was ours now, and although we
only had her a few months, we were seriously attached - she was family, and
plus, who knows what would become of her in another home. What if she bit
someone else and they killed her or hurt her??? Needless to say, the
decision took all of 3 minutes to make - we kept her and learned to play by
HER rules. She's 2 now. I don't think she can ever be trusted around our
faces or fleshy parts, and NEVER around strangers, but you have NO idea how
it makes me feel to have her want picked up, or to give her a kiss on her
head when she first wakes up. Its like we traveled MILES to get to this
point. But boy has it been worth it.
Hang in there - it will pay off. My husband isn't a patient person and
his first reaction is to hurt back. He's learning SLOWLY that she's not
trying to hurt him intentionally. Snowball is learning SLOWLY that
biting is a no-no. Everything's a slow road, but a worthwhile one.
Give yourself another chance - you both deserve it.
- Mish
__MICHELLE Z. MATTA__________________________
Carnegie Mellon University......Athletic Dept
[log in to unmask]
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/mish/home.html
(Departmental)....http://www.cmu.edu/athletic
_____________________________________________
[Posted in FML issue 1738]
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