Recently I had a opportunity to visit with Chere (Agedog to those of you on
ferret-chat) at the Ferret Friends of Indian River County Shelter in
Florida.  What a wonderful shelter!  I had been on vacation for a week and
was suffering from serious fuzzy withdrawal, so was very pleased when Chere
let me play with seven of the little weasels at once!  Now, being owned by
only three myself, this was quite an experience!  I met L.K., Miss Rita,
Tigger, and a whole slew more.  It was sad to hear the stories of the
fuzzies that had been abused by their former owners, but these ferrets are
truely luckly to have found such dedicated people to help them learn to
trust again.  I also met my first ferrets with adrenal disease, and believe
me, the pictures on the 'net don't do justice to how pitiful the poor
hairless ex-fuzzies are--though fortunately they're just as playfull as
their hairy cousins!
 
Chere has a great setup for the rescuees--a quarentine area, big cages with
lots of hammocks and each ferret getting his own special food, a special
exercise area (ok, so it's the master bedroom suite, but it's lots of room
and each ferret gets at least 4 hours of play time per day...) as well as a
great screened porch with PVC pipe and a big barrel with holes cut in it a
lots of crinkly paper inside.  Gotta make one of those for my kids...
 
Chere also gave me a great tour of the headquarters of the Ferret Friends
Disaster Reponse Int'l, as well as a huge packet of information about
different ferret groups and ferret care.  Even though I've been owned by
ferrets for 8 years now, there was still a lot of information that was new
to me.  In touring the shelter, I was particularly impressed with the fact
that Chere can have all of her ferrets (12, I think at current count?) in
the car and ready to evacuate with food, water, medical supplies, litter
etc., in just 10 minutes!  We could all learn a thing about disaster
response here.  The first thing I did when I got home was put together a
hurricaine evacuation kit and plan for my family--just in case the big one
hits Virginia this year...
 
Anyway, it was a great visit, and Chere and Larry are great people to be
running such a place.  I know it takes a lot of time and energy to run a
shelter, and I hope that we can all do everything we can to support the
efforts of the FFIRC and all the other shelters out there!
 
Jen
[Posted in FML issue 1585]