>One of my ferrets, Teddy, was just diagnosed with a fibroma in his left
>shoulder.  It has engulfed his whole nerve in the leg and to remove it
>would mean amputation.  The biopsy came back negative, thank God.
 
Dear Eleanor,
 
First let me say I'm sorry you are going through this problem with your
ferret.  Ferrets can get around on three legs just fine... dogs and cats
can do it, and ferret has a much lower center of gravity :-).  So if you
decide to have the leg amputated, you should not worry too much about
that.
 
Second, STOP blaming yourself.  This whole myth that if we just somehow
find the *perfect* diet and feed it to our ferrets, it will prevent them
from ever getting sick has done a huge disservice to ferret owners.
Sure, diet is important.  But the test of any theory is whether you can
disprove it with a single instance that does not fit the theory.  You
have a 3.5 year old privately bred ferret, raised on a high protein/fat
diet, altered late.  All these things (according to the group mind of
the FML) will mean that your ferret will never get a disease, and will
only die of old age.  As you are painfully now aware, it may not happen
that way.  I had a privately bred ferret who also got adrenal at 3 years
of age, but he was asymptomatic, so I never knew until he couldn't pee
one day (the breeder still can't believe it was adrenal, but the
pathology said it was.  The breeder can't believe this because late
altered privately bred ferrets aren't supposed to get adrenal - so says
the theory).  I've also had a farm bred (Path Valley) ferret, who lived
on various kibbles his whole life, as well as whatever else I would give
him.  He ate anything - tortilla chips, Cocoa Puffs, muffins, popcorn,
fruit, anything off my plate - you get the idea.  He also lived to be
over 8 years old before dying of old age.
 
I don't think it matters whether they are privately bred or not, or
whether we feed them exclusively mice, or chicken gravy, or good quality
kibble.  At least, I don't think it matters to the ferret population as a
whole.  There are probably instances where a genetic predisposition in an
individual could be affected by a certain diet.  But I don't believe that
diet alone causes the problems we see in ferrets.  We want the cause to
be simple, because then we feel like we have control over it, and can
prevent a problem from happening by simply doing one thing.  This is
natural and understandable.  But we can't always prevent the bad stuff
from happening.
 
This is NOT your fault.
 
Good luck with Teddy,
Karen
[Posted in FML issue 4264]