I will start off by saying that an opinions expressed in this post
are mine, and are not necessarily the opinions of any of my friends,
associates, or organizations I am a member of.

I do not always have the time to read the FML, and even if I do read
it, I often just skim through, reading those posts with a subject line
that interests me. "Just Curious" is not a subject line that grabs my
attention, and so I missed you original FML post until I saw the
replies to it the next day. I did go back then and read what you had
posted, but did not feel the need to respond because it appeared to me
you had confused several different things, and Vickie, Kay, and the
others who had replied had pretty much answered your questions. Again,
on Saturday, I missed your post, and did not read it until I had seen
Vickie's reply.

You mention that you received a lot of hate mail in response to your
original post, and for that I am sorry. I personally saw nothing in
your original post to warrant hate mail. It seemed to me you were
simply uninformed or misinformed. However, you also mentioned in both
your posts that you were posting on the FML in reference to a
discussion on another forum. There is no law against doing that, but
when you do it, those of us who are not on the other forum may not be
aware of everything and exactly what was said by who, and so we cannot
really be certain what exactly is going on. Is it possible that some of
the hate mail you received was associated with comments from the other
forum?

Next, since I have no clue who you are, I do not know if you know me or
not. So, just briefly, I am a small scale breeder who is also a member
of the AFA, and attends AFA shows to show my ferrets. I do not run a
rescue or shelter in addition to my breeding activity, but I do try to
provide as much support as I can to the shelter community. I understand
the importance of the ferret shelter community, and try to help where I
can.

As an example, I am more likely to show more ferrets at a show like
Buckeye Bash, Fandango, or the GCFA show, where the proceeds of the
show go to the support of a specific shelter. When I can, I also try to
sponsor a ring at those shows, again, because in the end, it does help
a shelter. I also give what I can afford to groups like SOS, for the
benefit of shelters. Finally, if you came into my house, you would find
that all of my ferret bedding comes from individuals who either run a
shelter and sell bedding as a way of supporting their shelter, or who
make and sell bedding to have money to donate to the shelter community.
Most of my ferret toys come to me the same way. Also, at shows if there
is a shelter group selling food or other ferret supplies I use, I will
buy from them, rather than going to a pet store or ordering it online.

When the DMK rescue occurred, I did not adopt any of those ferrets. I
was just recovering from having had ADV in my home, and at the time was
being very careful about what ferrets came into my home. Some of the
DMK ferrets were not ADV tested before being sent out to homes. It was
a risk I was not willing to take. My house is small, and I have limited
quarantine area. Plus, what I do have is not suitable for any long term
stay by a ferret. As a result, only ferrets from ADV- homes who have
had a recent ADV test, or are kits from an ADV- home are allowed into
my house.

That said, I do know of several breeders who did adopt ferrets from the
rescue. And, since your initial email was pointing the finger at Kay,
let me point out that Kay is an active member of HOFA, and HOFA as an
organization was very much in the thick of things when the rescue
happened. I do not know what role Kay played, but I know that HOFA took
about 100 (I believe that was roughly how many) of the ferrets almost
immediately, had people who went to Lori's and stayed to help with the
care, donated a lot of supplies for the ferrets' care, helped with
transport of some of the ferrets, etc. HOFA has a number of small scale
breeders in addition to Kay who are members, and as far as I know, all
of them helped out in whatever way they could.

Yes, Kay is a good friend of mine, but part of the reason she is is
that she is a very responsible breeder who takes good care of her
ferrets, is very careful where she places them, and breeds for healthy
ferrets with good temperament.

Again, I have no clue who said what on another forum, but it seemed
like Kay's previous explanation to your first FML post answered all
your questions and confusion.

Danee DeVore
ADV - If your ferret hasn't been tested, you don't know!
For more information visit:
<http://www.ferretadv.com>
ADV - Find out how you can help:
http://help4adv.terrabox.com/

[Posted in FML 7187]