Ok, I posted some time ago about my baby whose back legs wouldn't work...
As it turned out, she was born with a ligament problem and needs to have
surgery (at least it wasn't insulinoma).
 
Anyway, the deal is that just the other day I was in a local pet store just
browsing (mostly there to play with the baby ferrets) and there was a lady
there interested in purchasing the baby ferret they had for sale.  I told
her I had ferrets and she started asking me all sorts of questions.  I
answered what I could and encouraged her to get information elsewhere as
well, because I by no means know everything about them... ( I even gave her
info on local shelters and encouraged her to "adopt").  Ok, the point of my
story is, as we were talking and playing with the baby MF ferret, I noticed
it has the same problem with its back legs as my baby!  I was soooo
shocked!  I brought it to this lady's attention, encouraged her to make an
appointment with her vet BEFORE she bought the ferret so she could get it
in before the 48 hour return policy was up.  As it turned out, she uses the
same vet for her dog as I take my ferrets to, so I told her that she should
bring this up to him because he would remember me.  I even offered to give
her my name and ferrets names to take with her so he could explain better
what lies ahead with this ferret.  Well she REFUSED!  She said she didn't
care!  Ok, fine, no problem, I understand you love them whether or not they
have problems, but my thought was if we brought this up to the pet store
owner, she could send it back to MF and hopefully they would get a clue...
it didn't work, so now what?  If this is going to become a more common
problem with MF ferrets, then something should be done somehow, but what?
Emails to MF do not work, and I suppose I could visit EVERY pet store in
my area and give preliminary exams to all their ferrets (lol), but what is
to say that the pet store owner wont think I am crazy.  I thought about
calling my vet and letting him know I have seen other ferrets in our area
with this problem, but what can he do?  He explained to me it was because
of the constant inbreeding MF does with their ferrets.  HELP!!  Ideas?
Thoughts?  Maybe MANY MANY emails to MF would work?  I don't know... please
tell me what you think I can do!  I want to save future ferrets and future
ferret owners.....
 
Shelley and Tom
Madison
MacKenzie
[Posted in FML issue 2926]