I'll have to preface this story by saying the Ember, our 2 year old golden
retriever / german shepherd is pretty tolerant of the ferrets.  She doesn't
play much with them anymore and they mostly avoid her.  She actively
dislikes one ferret, Sonnet, who used to nip her nose when she was younger.
 
Well last night, there was ferret activity and dooking in a jacket on the
living room floor.  I was watching TV nearby and thought nothing of it.
Eventually Ember went to check it out, and started growling.  I assumed
that it was Sonnet in the jacket, and that she was playing with Jazz, one
of our two albinos, as I saw a little white face.  Paddington, the other
albino, screams around Sonnet, so it couldn't be her.  So I yelled at
Ember and kept watching TV.
 
A couple minutes later, this happened again, only I saw that the white
ferret was Paddington, and Sonnet wasn't there.  I broke it up, then
Paddington bit Ember's foot again as Ember wouldn't leave her.  Then
suddenly, Paddington was hanging from Ember's mouth and Ember was shaking
her head and growling desperately.  I grabbed Paddington, and found it was
Paddington who was holding onto Ember and wouldn't let go.  Finally she
did, but only to bite me.  I got a better grip on her, and finally realized
that she was stuck in the jacket.
 
It turns out she had started crawling through a little hole in the seam of
my jacket and was now stuck like Pooh Bear coming out of Rabbit's Hole.  I
had a hold on her, but I couldn't get the jacket off of her, so I screamed
for Craig (my husband who was naturally in the washroom).  He got some
scissors, but couldn't figure out where to cut so he said, "Here, I'll hold
her." and reached for her and promptly got bitten as well.  Once he got a
grip, I cut the jacket off and he put her down.  After she'd calmed down
for a minute I held her in my arms and she just lay there for a while.  She
then went upstairs and was eating.  I tried to tell her that perhaps this
was a sign that she should go on a diet, but I don't think she was in the
mood to hear that.
 
I had to apologize profusely to Ember for yelling at her, I might not of
noticed for a long time if it wasn't for her.  And she was getting bitten
hard, and not biting back at all, just growling and trying to shake her
off.  And she kept going back to Paddington to see what was wrong, while I
lay on the couch nearby not noticing anything.  What a good dog.
 
Everyone seems fine this morning - Paddington is her usual hyper self and
Ember has no obvious cuts bothering her.  But she's getting canned food for
super, my hero dog.
 
Wendy and the half dozen crayfish dancers.
[Posted in FML issue 3162]