I run a small rescue in Va Beach, Va. I struggle with life and death
decissions regularly.

I have had many deaf ferrets that did not know they were deaf-there was
no way to tell them:) They got along just fine. About 1/3 of ferrets
that come through here have been deaf and their owners never knew.

One of them, we discovered, went blind at some point. I have no idea
when, because he got around so well. I am no even good about keeping
furniture in the same space all the time. He almost never bumped into
anything and knew where his food and water was. My crew has at least 12
hours out of cage time each day. They have a very large den, a kitchen,
utility room and a sunroom. We are not talking about a very enclosed
area for him to figure out. For a treat sometimes I open the gate and
they have access to the other 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms. He always found
his food, water, cage and toys. When we had to put him down it was
completely unrelated to his deafness or blindness.

This past summer we took in a ferret that it took a month to figure
out he was blind and 2 months to determine he is also deaf. He has no
problem getting around and uses the litter boxes far more consistently
that the others. He always checks the gate to see if it is open so he
can explore the rest of the house. He has even figured out how to get
it open when I forget to put the bungie cord on it.

I struggled this fall with a decision to either amputate a ferret's
leg. He had a tumor that grew from nothing to the size of a grapefruit
in 4 weeks time. It was wrpped around the bone, so amputation was the
only option for saving him. The initially decision was to not amputate
the leg and let him go when it got to where he could not get around.
The problem was that he still got around when it became so large so
quickly. I could not just let him go even though it was 90% possible
that this was an aggressive cancer. I finally decided to do the
surgery. That was about 4 months ago. The first night after the surgery
I was up all night with him. I dozed off around 5am. I woke up at
6:30am and could not find him. He had gotten up onto the second section
of a ferret nation cage(the cage is one with the bottom shelf taken off
and the wheels put back on so when a 3rd sectionl is added I can get it
through a door. Each section has 3 levels) Bear is doing great and can
now run faster than me. It may not always be the best decision if a
ferret is older, has other health issues, etc. but for Bear. This was
a fantastic ending.

I hope to post some pictures later-a short history: He was a special
gift who was rescued from someone in West Virginia who was trying to
sell him through Yahoo answers. Through the FML and the SOS shelter
list I got in touch with Cindy Scheit and Ann Church. Ann and her
daughter, Barbara drove about 3 hours at one in the morning to rescue
him from a cat carrier, outside being fed Milkbone dog biscuits. Ann
fattened him up and she and her husband delivered him to me on
Christmas Eve last year. It was a very special gift.

Thanks for reading this. I hope this helps anyone whomay have to make
a tough decision.

Cheryl
FERRET SANCTUARY 1

[Posted in FML 7287]