Dear Sukie, It was good to hear from you once again.  I too would like to
get the name of the wheelchair product that you mentioned as it could very
well become a part of Kodos rehab.  We designed a device on paper that we
were going to use on Willis years ago, but he started walking on his own
and it never came to fruition.
 
With regards to my numbers on adrenal cases, the surgeries that we paid for
last year are hard numbers.  I write them off and there fore must keep the
record and receipts for our Uncle Sam.  As far as the referral numbers,
those are just guesstimates that we tally up according to the verbal
statements from our vets as we maintain a very close relationship with them
by going to and fro with the kids coming and going all the time and also
verbal statements from our clients.  Over the years, we have records of
thousands of surrenders and adoptions that have come through here.  We
won't claim to know all the breeders out there like some of you do, as we
mostly see Marshall , Pathvalley and Canadian ferrets.  We also see an
occasional wierd looking tatoo that we don't know, but the number is
extremely insignificant.  The canadians all have letters and not numbers,
dots, slashes, different colored inks or patterns, so they are easily
recognized here too.  As far as when we started to see early age adrenal,
when our volumne increased so did the incidence and variations in age of
what I prefer to call endocrine related disorders that are related to early
age altering.  The ailments aren't just adrenal.  They can be pancreatic,
liver, or kidney conditions which can cause numerous other problems such as
hypoglycemia, diabetes, what we refer to as insulinoma, I with more
research, I think lymphoma too.  Some of this is just experience related
guessing at this point, but think about this for a moment Sukie, You have
seen enough baby ferrets to know how much they are different in development
from week to week as babies to understand that at 6-10 weeks of age, they
aren't fully grown or developed.  This is a fact for sure, it is proven
that most animals that have their reproductive organs removed early in
life, for whatever reason, need to be on hormone shots for the rest of
their lives because they won't develop normally without the hormones.
Humans for example need the homones because without them, boys will grow
breasts and lack facial and other problems and girls will have certain
growth issues as well as growing facial hair that should be on a man.  Not
to mention the many emotional problems caused by hormonal imbalances.
 
Cont. as continued response to wheelchair etc.
[Posted in FML issue 3104]