Well, I finally coughed up some cash for a full account.  been busy with
many GCFA projects and just finished our 7th Ferret Show.  This is my 4th
year as registrar and first as head of the show committee... WHEW!!  We had
over 160 ferrets this year.  Over 20 from Michigan!  (Quite a few from Mass
as usual too!  Glad to see that the Mass crowd may soon be legal.  It's
wayyyy overdue.
 
A few comments on some FML articles I've been scanning:
 
Registry Organizations:
    I think that ANY organization attempting to be the "AKC" of ferretdom is
destined to fall short of this goal.  Groups like the AKC are made up
primarilly of folks with intact animals with family trees as big as a
redwood.  Their animals are of one breed, generally (e.g.  Collie,
Rottweillerm etc) and will only be bred with like animals.  Ferrets, OTOH,
come in a plethora of colors and color mixes that only the most dilligent
breeder can hope to 'breed true' with consecutive generations.  The makeup
of most registries will tend to be from breeders, particularly if the
registry charges a fee to register the animal, with the possible exception
of persons registering ther alters so they can enter them is a show that
requires them to be registered.  A few years back, I attempted to initiate a
census of ferrets in the U.S.  No fee was charged and the resulting database
held responses from over 3000 ferret owners with over 42,000 ferrets.
Unfortunately, the system crashed while compiling the data and, due to the
poor response, we decided that the census portion was insufficient to bother
re-keying the data for another run.  I learned late that others who were
themselves planning a similar census de-bunked my efforts and many, who had
planned to participate, didn't because of this.  I also admit to poor
planning...  while we had the cooperation of many local ferret groups,
support for the project fell apart at the national level as there seemed to
be political skirmishes erupting among them at the time.
 
I'm in agreement with the voices here and elsewhere that say we should all
put our personal differences aside and work to the betterment of the ferret
community as a whole.  Too much can be lost if our detractors can point to
our in-fighting and use it against us in our battles to legalize ferrets.
 
Distemper:
    I was under the impression that the ferrets in question were vaccinated
with ineffective vaccine.  The check in procedures at the GCFA show were
supervised by Dr.  Susan Brown, and it seems unusual that two ferrets with
little or no protection could slip past her any other way.  Certainly, its
possible to defraud by passing one ferret off as another, but if all the
other ferrets were protected by a viable distemper vaccine, the likelihood
of them catching it should be nil.  It takes two, at a minimum.
 
  x Even before this show, there were people blaming the GCFA show for the
spread of the ECE virus.  Thankfully we didn't have to do a lot of 'damage
control' for that.  Simple logic and a bit of easy math prove that to be
false.
 
[Soapbox Mode Off]
 
Time to scoop pans, here so I'll sign off for now...
 
Roger McMillian GCFA Show Chairman
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[Posted in FML issue 1381]