My wife and I are amazed at your story about a Maryland Breeder who
apparently has made some dubious claims.  We are at a total loss to even
guess who the breeder you are talking about is.  We know and work with
most of the people in the video.
 
A ferret pedigree is not worthless.  But it really means nothing to a pet
ferret that will not be used for breeding.  Those among us who are
actively trying to improve the breeding of ferrets use pedigrees and a
knowledge of the ferrets named to keep track of good qualities and bad
traits as well.
 
LIFE certification of a shelter means no more or less than AFA, NAFA or
any other certification of a shelter.  We are not LIFE certified but only
because we've never bothered to request certification from them.  A
certain well know LIFE certified shelter did infect our ferrets with ECE
a couple of years ago, we were not warned that the shelter was infected
until after we'd gotten there and completed an adoption.  We were led to
believe that the disease was not life threatening to ferrets at all.
Other people have reported problems with this same shelter.  BUT the
conditions we keep our ferrets in apparently are not conducive to passing
this disease along as none of our other ferrets had a single symptom of
ECE - only the new ferret.  Long after this we got into breeding no new
ferret has ever shown symptoms of ECE and to our knowledge no ferret that
has been over here or adopted from here has ever infected its new room
mates.  We do talk frankly about these issues to anyone who ever talks to
us about our ferrets.
 
Back to the pedigree and guarantee issue.  We know several breeders in
Maryland and have a hard time believing any of them would make a dubious
claim such as having bred out these cancer genes.  There are some
breeders I do not trust at all.  We know of lies having been told even to
other breeders but not from anybody from Maryland and in the video.  This
is very disturbing to us because we have to trust other breeders and we
actively work with many of them in many ways.  There are breeders in the
video we do not have a close relationship with - we saw several of them
we don't really know in reviewing the video while writing this.  My wife
used to breed
and show German shepherds.  Canine pedigrees for dogs mean no more or
less than ferret pedigrees.  An AKC pedigree just means that the sire and
dam (parents) of the puppy are also AKC registered - when a breed is
recognized a list of dogs is recognized as members of that breed and
become registered with the AKC.  The AKC registry is most definitely NOT
a true measure of quality - we have two AKC registered Pomeranians of
which one is a 'quality' dog and the other is most definitely not.
 
We guarantee that any ferret kits we've bred will not come down with
genetic problems in a six month period (though we probably wouldn't be a
stickler for dates) but all we can do is offer another kit for free.  We
wouldn't require the sick animal to be returned.
 
If there is anything we can do to help you please let us know.  You
obviously wanted to not specifically name the breeder.  If you tell us
anything in confidence in private email I will guarantee
confidentiality.
 
bill and diane killian
zen and the art of ferrets
[Posted in FML issue 1245]