I am hoping that some of you have encountered this before: I have a
2 1/2 (+/-) male ferret that came to me along with his female cage mate
last October. They were surrendered to me by a gal that had saved them
from an abandond apartment. This woman had found out the owner of this
pair had stolen a bunch of drugs and skipped town and as best as she
could figure, they had been alone for possibly 4 days. She had them for
several months but could not afford their care. Unfortunately, she did
not know much about ferrets and was feeding them cheap cat food and
vanilla ice cream. But, at least, she saved their lives.

This pair has health problems that my vet and I are still discovering.
Ozzie had an EKG several weeks ago that was totally funky. Deanna has
breathing problems that seemed to be asthma. They both very easily
contract upper resp infections. (They have had three since April.) Keep
in mind that they came out of a drug house and the lady that had them
for several months had four smokers in her house.

Now, to my problem, Ozzie is scared to death of a medicine dropper. The
first time that I tried to give him amoxi-drops, he threw up before I
even had the dropper to his mouth. I am convinced that both of these
babies were forced to ingest some sort of drug or another. The
amoxi-drops I can mix in with ferrivite or a mush that I make for him
and he will eat it. But since he just finished a course of this a week
ago and is back to sneezing and running nose my vet has put him on
clavimox. Ozzie will not eat this in anything that I have mixed it in.
This morning I very carefully scruffed him and held him close to me and
very slowly managed to get about half the dose into him. But tonight
when I tried to do the same, he turned his head back totally to his
side and shut his eyes so tight as if to wish to disappear. It broke
my heart; I can't stand to stress him so--he shuts down on me so
easily. I held him for 20 minutes, rocking, kissing, whispering to
him until he finally relaxed and fell asleep.

Has any of you had ferrets that came from a situation like this? I had
a hard time getting my vet to believe me that there are addicts out
there that will give drugs to their pets, but after seeing Ozzie's EKG,
he has conceded to this sad fact. I have read that crystal meth can
cause irreagular heart beats. How do you get a medicine with an
unpleasent taste into a ferret that has this kind of history?

Thank you in advance,
Bonnie and the gang at Nikki's House

[Posted in FML 6044]