Today was a very sad day for us. With the shelter there are a number
of losses of the ferrets and I usually don't write about them but
there was a special boy who we adopted for ourselves and the first one
that I can say really got into my husband's heart. He came to us from
our Humane Society as a second chance reject- very dehydrated and
emaciated. It was in May of 2005, when the air in the southwest becomes
very dry and small animals dehydrate easily. I took him home and fed
him up with Bob C's chicken gravy. Gave sub-q fluids.He responded well,
started eating TF dry food and filled out well within a week. But then
I noticed something in his belly, which upon surgery turned out to be a
pretty huge hairball. That's the first time I had taken a ferret in for
stomach surgery. More gravy to the rescue. He made a wonderful recovery
and we decided to keep him. He was a loner and would tear into anyone
who crossed his path.Therefore he would be put into master bedroom
after his morning rounds, where he would sleep in a plastic dishpan or
sometimes on the carpet under the bed. Even if he was out in the rest
of the house he would always find something made of plastic to sleep
in, a bucket, bag, storage basket. He became Daddy's Boy, playing with
Bill in afternoon when he came home from work. Then he would go back to
sleep in his preferred plastic bed until Bill went to bed when Silver
had to go to his cage.

Recently he had developed insulinoma and he got his pred in gravy twice
a day, but he must have needed more now and he was having seizures.
More pred didn't help at this point, he was hospitalized and the vet
called with the bad news that he was unresponsive in spite of the
glucose coming up, indicating brain damage so the decision was made
to help him to the Rainbow Bridge. It is the first time I have seen
my usually stoic husband cry over the loss of one of our ferrets.
Silverado was truly Daddy's Boy.

Fly free, Silver. Enjoy the healing power of the Rainbow Bridge and
let yourself learn to play with some of the many other babies there.

Love from Mom and Dad

Carol Owens
Ferret Friends, Inc.
Tucson AZ

[Posted in FML 6412]