Howdy,
 
I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but when I read the
posts about syringes, I realized how dumb a person can be.  Whenever I've
needed to syringe feed my weezils, I've always been cussing up a blue
streak trying to get the stuff in the syringe.  I had been making a mess
trying to carefully pour to mixture in the big end of the syringe.  Never
once did it occur to me to suck the stuff up into the syringe.  Talk about
being brain dead.  I think it must have been the ferrets' fault.  I'm not
sure how, but when in doubt, blame the ferrets.
 
In other news, it's finally happened to me.  After 6 years of relatively
healthy ferrets, I had one go in for adrenal surgery last week.  Insanity
was showing the classic symptoms: hair-loss, whole male behavior, yadda,
yadda, yadda.  So in to the vet he went and the very next day, Insanity was
under the knife.  While the vet was in there, he also found a pancreatic
tumor (insulinoma) and a big ol' hairball, which were all removed.  Now
Insanity is home and raisin' hell as usually.  If it weren't for his bald
belly and the nasty-looking stitches, you wouldn't even know he had
surgery.  In fact, I think he's even more energetic than before, if that's
even possible.
 
This leads me to a question.  The hairball the vet removed was huge and
had obviously been in there a long time.  I've never bothered to give my
ferrets hairball preventative stuff cuz I figgered they ain't cats so they
don't need it.  Well, obviously I was wrong.  And I figger if Insanity was
that bad, the other ferrets probably are too.  So my question is what do
y'all recommend as far as hairball treatment?  I'm just looking for info on
what you use, how often you use it, etc.
 
One other little topic, I'm way behind in the FML (I'm still going through
Hurricane Georges) except for just scanning the new issues and I noticed a
few posts about coughing/wheezing ferrets.  I just wanted to say that just
recently my ferrets were doing the same thing and a trip to the vet
revealed respritory infections in all of them.  It's now clearing up with
Clavamox twice a day.  So that's something to think about if you have a
chronic wheezer.  If you have any doubt, the vet should be your first
source of info.
 
Well, I think that's all I have for now.  So now I'm off to medicate
everyone, which takes a while cuz Insanity had surgery and is on
antibiotics, all the other ferrets have the respritory infections, and
Marco the Pom has a brochial infection and and ear infection.  What fun!
 
May your hairballs be forever hacked,
Limejello & The Weezils of Doom
[Posted in FML issue 2460]