Great News!!!  After 4 months of working with "Peg-leg," he has finally
accepted and is using his new wooden leg!  We here at the Ferret Endowment
for Research, Rehabilitation, Education & Training Society, NW are indeed
thrilled and amazed that "Peg leg" has finally accepted his prosthesis.
It is a wooden, hand-carved artifical paw/leg that is attached to an
English-made Figure-8 harness.
 
His left "stump" of a leg is so short that he had to do a kind of a
kangaroo hop to go forward, all his front weight formerly on his good right
front paw.  Only when he stopped moving would he kind of tilt or list to
his left and then put his weight more or less (?) on both his good right
paw and his stump.
 
Formerly he'd wear this contraption only for an hour or so and then chew at
it to get it off.  We soon realized that we did not have enough of a shock
cushion at the end of his stump and the aluminum/wooden tube into which his
stump fit.  Now with that fixed, he wears his "wooden leg" all day.  It's
really amazing to see him running along with all the other ferrets, seeming
so unconcerned and yet happy that all four of his legs are near "normal."
 
I do feel a bit sorry for him when he's tethered outside in the digging
grounds and tries digging with both front paw claws the way he used to
do before his left paw was crushed in an accident in a former owner's
automobile door.
 
Nevertheless, we are soooo happy for him.  If only the North West Ferret
Report and the Ferret Mailing List were capable of posting on the list a
photograph of this "wooden-leg" ferret while he is wearing his wooden leg,
you'd be as happy to see him as we are here at our Rehabilitation Center.
 
But I guess it's impossible for me to take a picture of my ferret with a
wooden leg.
 
Nope.  Got to use a camera.
 
Gottcha'    (Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, chuckle . . . ad infinitum.)
 
Edward Lipinski, of Charmin fame.  And now in the Pinocchio (wooden legs,
et al) class.  Oh, yes he still has a sore back and a noisy neck vertebra.
Guess he got that from all that bending over doing his Kevin Costner thing.
You know - dancing with wolves.  Whoops, I mean, dancing with ferrets.
[Posted in FML issue 2706]