Sorry that I haven't mentioned this first part earlier; it had to wait
because of some health problems with older relatives which have been
paramount recently.
 
Anyway, someone about a week back asked about a ferret which had lost
weight and acted sick weeks after having an allergic reaction.  First of
all, ANY time a ferret shows what might be serious health problems the
ferret must get veterinary care.  Second, here's something I learned from
personal experience and know it's true in humans (plus seems like the sort
of thing which is likely to be able to generalize to other critters such as
ferrets).  After I almost died when I suddenly developed severe allergies
in my 20s the physicians said that with humans one of the most common times
to develop new allergies is young adulthood and that's especially the case
if the individual is facing difficulties which stress the body.  (I was
dealing with a tropical disease I'd picked up in the Amazon Basin, another
problem which later wound up requiring major surgery, and a pregnancy which
miscarried during the time when I developed allergies, plus I was going to
school full time and working to finance most of that.  Don't know how I did
it.)  What I am getting at here is that even though it might SEEM like the
allergic reaction has been the precursor of health problems which happen
afterward, the reality might be that there was an existing illness or
disorder which simply wasn't prominent enough to notice yet though the
ferret's body was already stressed.  That such a health difficulty would
show up afterward should not be a surprise in this case.  This is just a
hypothesis, of course, but it might be something to keep in the back on
your mind.
 
First ferret: our first one was an unaltered male from a breeder sometime
in the early 80s back before there was really any established ferret health
care knowledge.  She told us to feed him any cat foods, said to keep him in
a aquarium (Said that drafts kill them.  :-o!), and that was it!  The first
time he played we thought he was having convulsions.  Had to SOON take him
back and later have a female when Steve developed incredibly bad allergies
to adult male musk.  The funny part is that neither of us wanted a ferret
at the time but WE EACH THOUGHT THAT THE OTHER ONE DID!  Basically, he
pushed to get the ferret because he thought I wanted it and I pushed
because I thought he wanted it!  (Those things still happen to us sometimes
but not as dramatically.)  You know where it went from there.
 
Some very sad encounters happened early on.  People were selling fur fitch
which didn't tame down easily as ferrets and a lot got destroyed, and a
number of people wanted to get in on the brand new fad pet.  One woman in
very northwestern N.J. (Can't recall name.) advertised for starting a N.J.
ferret club back then; asked her how long her's lived (We had read three
books by then -- two of them British and had ballpark figure.) and she
casually replied something like, "Oh, you know, one or two years." which I
knew even then was horrid, then she added that with 80 of them running
around their short life span wasn't a problem!  Plus, it turned out that
they were all breed from the same two originals and they mated willy-nilly.
That was when I first made the acquaintance of one of the humane groups
here -- to shut her down!  There were also the heartbreaks associated with
the lack of health knowledge back then which is why I get so exasperated
when people won't use what is known.
 
QUESTIONS: There have recently been requests for info or statements about
licensing shelters, becoming non-profit, and becoming tax deductible.
Steve and I do NOT have a shelter, though I recall from experience with a
science education charity that becoming tax deductible (so that donors can
deduct monies given from taxes) is a FEDERAL process which can easily take
a year or so.  Licensing, and being listed as non-profit (for the shelter
or club's sake tax-wise) are STATE procedures which are going to vary state
by state.  COULD PEOPLE IN EACH STATE WHO KNOW ABOUT THESE PROCEDURES POST
HOW IT IS DONE (NAMING STATE/DISTRICT/TERRITORY/COLONY/PROTECTORATE...) SO
ALL CAN LEARN ABOUT THEIR STATE?  COULD SOMEONE FAMILIAR WITH THE FEDERAL
PROCESS TO BECOME TAX DEDUCTIBLE FOR DONORS POST ABOUT THAT?  Hey, it's
wouldn't hurt if people in other countries let folks know how it's done
there, either.  Maybe if enough info arrives someone will throw it on a
webpage (after getting authors' permissions).  It would be very handy for
people to have this info someplace accessible!  Maybe the folks who run SOS
and Star Ferrets (Pam, Georgia, Judith, and Ela) would even find it handy;
I can imagine that people might assume they have all sort of esoteric info
right at their fingertips.
[Posted in FML issue 2609]