Hi All,
 
First, my condolences to all on the list with ill fuzzies and to those
who have lost their little ones.  I have an old, sick shelter girl
(insulinoma) who is holding her own but every time I read about the
babies who are sick or gone I look down at her and realize that eventually
I will be writing one of those posts too.  But right now she's doing OK
and trying valiantly to live up to her name--Dancer.
 
To my questions.  I am one half of a shelter that is based in cities which
are 1 hour apart.  My partner and I each keep a group of ferrets and
sometimes I have more, sometimes he does.  Since his area gets more calls
than mine I generally pack up my babies and drive to his house where we
meet potential adopters and have our initial interview.  We've been using
this method for about a year.
 
But now we've determined that it's simply not working very well.  First,
it's too hard on the ferrets--2 hours on the road and then meeting new
ferrets (the one's at my partner's house) and people is causing them more
stress than we first had thought.  So we've decided the ferrets won't
travel anymore.
 
Second, it's getting to be a problem for me because I drive two hours
and then we're having lots of no-shows.  We've called our potentials and
confirmed on several occasions and they still don't show.  It's very
frustrating.
 
So my questions to the FML are 1) if you're a shelter with multiple
locations how do you currently deal with these issues and 2) does anyone
else have any suggestions?
 
We both love our shelter work and would not consider shutting down, we're
just looking for ways to be better.  We're pretty small and currently have
just 7 shelter ferrets with maybe 2 more coming in today.
 
Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Judy Wallace
Cloud Nine Ferrets
Alabama/Tennessee
[Posted in FML issue 3115]