Hello All,
 
Discipline: Someone posted that their solution for discipline is to pick up
their ferrets and cuddle them.  Well, in my experience, what you get when
you do this is a VERY SPOILED ferret.  Auryn loves to bite/scratch feet, and
when he would do this, I would pick him up because, well, it hurt, and I
thought instead of spanking him, if I just removed him from the source of
entertainment, he would get bored!  Because of this, whenever he wants to be
picked up/wants attention, he bites feet.  I am now trying scruffing and
yelling "No", but it is hard to do without picking him up, which means he
still gets rewarded for biting feet.  He also keeps attacking the kitchen
for the same reason--to get attention.  He climbs the baby gate, plays in
all the cabinets, and when I go pick him up, he just lays in my arms and
smiles.  I have tried ignoring him when he is in the kitchen (all he can
play with are the pots, pans, silverware, etc.  He never gets in the
dishwasher, stove, or fridge), and he gets bored and goes to sleep.  If
anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
 
Remote controls: Please, do not let your ferrets play with remote controls.
Some of them may be addicted to the rubber buttons and can't resist eating
them which may lead to blockage.  At the very least, you get a very sick
fuzzy who vomits and lies around listless.  If you are lucky, laxatone will
do the trick, but complete blockage, requiring surgery, may occur.  I
discovered this the hard way with Auryn ("getting in more trouble than any
other ferret ever thought of").  He is literally addicted to the remote
control and will fight me for it continually.  Most the time, I just leave
it on top of the tv so he can't reach it (yeah, I know, a REMOTE does a heck
of a lot of good ON the tv which is 10 feet away from the couch).  Well, it
works better not letting him near it than the two episodes where he ate 2
buttons completely off (and that was the remote for the cable box which I
had to return...luckily, they didn't notice the missing buttons) and was
throwing up for two days each time.
 
Kathleen and the 5 (8) fuzzits (well, I think Auryn counts for at least
3 regular fuzzies).
[Posted in FML issue 1646]