Re:  Ferret having difficulty breathing....
 
Sounds *alot* like pulmonary disease, i would say asmatha or emphazima or
pneumonia or fibrosis.  Since all the later diseases are pretty serious and
there are not other symptoms such as coughing, gagging, coughing up things
(very impt!!, ie blood, parts of lung, phlem, etc), i'd say its asmatha...
but I'm biases, as i have the disease (so do very many people), and know
the symptoms like the back of my hand.  Now.  what to do.  Ah ha.  Well i
suppose it is possible to get pediatric asmatha medication, but first i'd
start with, during an acute attack, doing the following:
 
1) Remove patient (ferret) from surround, surrounding is causing asmatha
(dust, mold, etc).
 
2) Bathe ferret, to further remove contaminants
 
3)  Dry ferret.
 
4) If ferret is still exhibiting symptoms, give it coke or another soft
drink with caffine.  They seem to like it in a glass with ice for some
reason.  Hold the glass or it will be knocked over.  Why caffine?  Some
don't know but caffine is a g protien coupled receptor blocker, similiar to
theophilin, a common asmatha treatment.  So this is real cool.  If humans
are having an asmatha attack, and medication unavailable (for ex, me), i
often have as much caffine as i can stand, which helps somewhat...but in
ferrets the kick should be much greater, as they have not been exposed to
the medication previously (many know that the response to caffine and many
drugs deminishes over time).
 
Okay, if it isn't asmatha, what else?  Hypertension could be, could be alot
of other things.  Hypertension - again remove patient from source.  There is
hypertension medication, but i don't know much about it unfortunately.
Other things, bacterial infection or viral (pneumonia or pneumonia like
symptoms), pneumonia works by damaging your lungs, making breathing more
difficult.
 
Well anyways thats my $0.02.
 
Oh, lastly sorry about getting ferrets and mongeese (mongeese, not
mongooses :) in the same family.  Many have pointed out they are not.
Well, if i were still in my ecology program, my profs would shoot me (just
graduated...).  Thanks to all.  (however, my post was more to inform people
of the state of hawaii's mentality regarding anything 'foreign'...very dim
view, very unlikely to see a change in ferret status any time soon., but
again that is just IMHO, and i hope i'm wrong.)
 
-Rob
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
   Robert Dejournett             [log in to unmask]
   Graduate Student
   Graduate School of Biomedical Science
   University of Texas Houston
[Posted in FML issue 2378]