Hi everyone,
 
I've only posted one other time when I was looking for a ferret-sitter,
but have been faithfully reading everyone else's posts for many months
now.
 
This time is a sad occasion as I'm writing to find out if anyone has any
ideas as to what might have gone wrong with one of our precious fuzzy
kids that we lost to the Rainbow Bridge on Thursday.  I will write some
background information about her which might offer clues as to what went
wrong.
 
In a way, she was sort of a rescue for us.  Pixie was a beautiful Silver
Mitt who'd been at our local PetCo for almost 6 months with no one
wanting her.  We suspect she'd been sold at least once but brought back
to the store.  After seeing her there for so long we couldn't get her off
our minds and eventually brought her home and added her to our brood of
four at the time.
 
She had two ongoing problems:
1) She was a nipper that we never could break her of.  We tried it all.
(Bitter Apple did stop her but who wants to have to put it on every
single day, day in and day out?) It's like she couldn't help herself,
she did it to get our attention and any time you had bare skin around
her she'd go after it.  It wasn't fear biting or vicious, but it still
hurt and broke the skin.
 
2) The second problem: Even though she was good about using the litter
box most of the time, sometimes, mostly when she was excited, all of a
sudden, right in the middle of the room, she'd stop and poop and pee just
a little.  We called them Pixie doodles.  Both these things had been
mentioned to our vet more than once, especially the 'doodling,' but he
didn't know what might be the cause other than an emotional thing.
 
Anyway, everything had been fine with her otherwise, but after we brought
her home from the ferret-sitter in July she had lost weight and was
lethargic.  I took her to our vet and we put her on an antibiotic and
duck soup.  She recovered very well and was playing great and very normal
(for her) except she was still a little thinner than she'd been before we
left on vacation.  Although she was eating their regular food, I was also
supplementing her diet periodically with duck soup because she enjoyed it
so much and I was hoping she'd gain a little more weight.
 
This Wednesday morning I noticed that she hadn't been up playing with the
others.  I gave her some duck soup, checked her for dehydration, she was
fine there, and went to work.  When we got home from work my husband
noted that she was still lethargic and felt warm.  She felt abnormally
warm to me as well.  But she willingly ate the duck soup again, took
water and lapped up a good amount of ferretvite.  Since our regular vet
isn't open in the evenings I called our emergency clinic for advice.
They said since her appetite was okay we probably could wait till
morning, but we could bring her in if we wanted, for our peace of mind.
We really thought she'd be okay and decided to wait till morning and take
her to our regular vet.  She even took, and ran off, with her favorite
treat, a half of a ferret N-bone, before we went to bed.  I got up
several times during the night to check on her and she seemed okay.  But
when I got up at six am she was in very bad shape.  She was limp and
could barely hold up her head.  I tried to rush her to the emergency
clinic, but we didn't make it in time.  She died in my lap about a mile
away.  At the end, I believe she was in great pain.  She sat up twice,
the last time holding her mouth open.  She took a few small gasps and
died with her tail poofed.
 
I feel so terrible, like I let her down.  Like all our kids, I loved her
very much and wouldn't let her suffer for a second if I could help it,
but didn't know it was serious until it was too late.  If we didn't watch
our kids like hawks, we wouldn't have noticed any symptoms until we found
her nearly dead.  She was only one year and two months old!  We've had
sick ferrets before with time to get them to the vet for whatever was
needed.  We've made a few trips to the after-hours emergency clinic too
when we thought it couldn't wait.  We've had ferrets for many years and
know to watch for changes in their habits and behavior.  Most times
anything we noticed, but continued to monitor, turned out to be nothing.
Should we have rushed her to emergency on the basis of a suspected fever?
My husband and I both have an upper respiratory virus that we've been
trying to avoid passing onto them.  Could she have caught that?  She
showed no other symptoms that she had.  Could whatever she had before
have come back with a vengeance, or could she have had something genetic
going on that lead to her death?  We don't believe she had an
obstruction.
 
I know no one can know for sure without tests, but wondered if any of
this sounded like something you've heard of or seen before.  What could
have killed our sweet baby so quickly?  She was dead in less than 24
hours of the first noted slight symptom.  Is there anything we can learn
from this to possibly prevent its happening again?
 
Thanks for reading this and we'd appreciate your prayers.
 
Rob and Toni with our kids still with us: Cody, Bunny, Chico, Bear and
Daisy
[Posted in FML issue 4257]