It's NOT possible to know long distance when it is time to give that final
gift.  Long distance you don't know the prognosis for a given illness in a
given individual and -- more importantly -- you can't know how much lust
that given individual has for life.
 
Consider Meltdown years ago: She relished life, just plain adored her time
in this world.  At age 5 when she had an adrenal growth which wasn't the
standard neoplasia but instead turned out to be malignant some folks here
advised us to put her down.  The surgery was corrective, though, and she
turned out to have 3 and 1/2 years ahead of her.  Later she got
cardiomyopathy with ventricular bigemini.  Again, some people wrote
advising that mercy shot.  She instead began Digoxin, Enacard, and
Furosemide which took her through to age 8 and 1/2, something like a year
after early symptoms began.  As her disease progressed she passed a few
clots.  Each time people told us to put her to sleep, but each time except
during her last two days her body, with massage and meds, was able to
dissolve the clots and she returned to playing, cuddling, and wanting to
meet kids.  (I swear that the one thing Meltie didn't like about us was
that we didn't have children; she worshipped children and was very motherly
to any who were upset, doing everything her little heart could find to
cheer them -- kisses, hugs, kissing away tears, doing tricks...)
 
Meltdown got a shot when she couldn't bounce back anymore, but we had
scores of messages from people who thought she should die before then even
while she was playing and laughing.  One person who is no longer on the FML
wrote advising euthanasia almost every two weeks for the last year of her
life: days when she played, when she kissed, when she hid important items
from us, when she groomed Warp who was like a daughter to her, when she
danced, when she cuddled and comforted children.  Her life was full, and,
yet, the very fact that she WOULD die seemed to make that person want to
rush her along.  I think for that person the thought of death and illness
was just so personally uncomfortable that he felt that the process needed
to be shortened.  If I implied that it was an easy haul I most certainly
would be lying through my teeth because sometimes Steve i felt like
collapsing, but it was worth it.  Know these two things: it was worth it,
and she lived as long as she had fun.  When you look at any individual
those, the quality of life for the critter and how well you are coping, are
two considerations you must take into account and go from there.
 
We've found that it's commonly best (for our's at least) to let the ferret
decide when to give up and then to give that final gift.  While they are
enjoying life we let them bounce and kiss for as long as they want.
 
On deaths from unknown causes: DO get post mortems with pathology in such
situations in case the ferret had anything the others might get or which
might hang in the environment to infect any future little hugballs.
Necropsies save lives.
[Posted in FML issue 2765]