Happy Valentine's everyone!  (i meant to send this yesterday) I hope all of
you spent a great Valentine's Day.  :)
 
I have a quick question.......does anyone know of a GOOD, Ferret literate
vet around Boston or Cambridge in Massachusetts?  We're not very happy with
our current vet, and was hoping someone could give us names of vets that
they thought were good for ferrets.  Thank you very much :)
 
We bought both our two ferrets from PetCo in Cambridge, MA.  One is
Marshalls (she had a cold from the beginning, treated with antibiotics for
three weeks), and I'm not sure of the other one.  Depending on who's on
the shift that week, the ferret cage looks differently taken care of.  One
time, the water bottle was hanging from so high that the kits had to jump
up everytime to get ONE lick.  Their poops were all over the place, and it
was just...........gross.  But then last week when we went, the water
bottle was placed lower, had plenty water, plenty food, and we asked the
staff if they were "really at least eight weeks old" and she replied
(pissed), "do you want to look at the documents?!?!"  We asked more
questions and we were pretty happy with her reply............so bottom
line, I really think it depends on who's there that day or week or month,
to take care of the ferrets.
 
I've dealt with some nasty PetCo staff, and some really nice ones.  Some
tried to sell us the entire store stock of ferret items when we first
bought our kit!  They tried to sell us this four-story HUGE cage, saying,
"ferrets really need running space, and they get stressed if you don't buy
this big kind." .........yeah, sure, whatever.  Instead we got a decent
size 3-story one, and two fits in with plenty space........we almost got
jipped off, if we hadn't been stingy.
 
Anyway, I personally think that it really just depends on the staff, or
manager, or whoever and not the entire "PetCo."  I really don't know their
paperworks etc so I defend or attack them about freezing animals or sending
kits early etc but I wish I knew.  until then, well, we'll just keep a good
eye open on the ferrets in this PetCo making sure they seem ay-okay.
 
I think that's really the best we all can do - keep an eye out for ferts
in pet stores.  Those fuzzballs can't speak for themselves, so somebody's
got to.
[Posted in FML issue 2588]