I wouldn't want to be a ferret getting a dental without anesthesia.
Ferrets are easy to tube, the gas is safe, and with proper monitoring
and heat supplementation, anesthesia is safer than dental disease.
Anesthesia is required to examine the inside of the teeth and the oral
cavity. Also the scalers and polishers are scary to these litlle guys.
Anesthesia is short and over with while sedatives or injectable
anesthetics last a long time. If a ferret has a pre-existing problem
that precludes anesthesia then by all means scrape awake, otherwise I
would never scare my little guys unneccesarily.

[Posted in FML 5546]