I also agree that vet students NEED to learn more about ferrets. Some of you may remember that I posted a month or so ago about the things I had learned about ferrets so far in vet school; I have included my notes again in Part 2 of this post. I know for a fact that I know far more about ferrets than the woman who was teaching the class. She had 50 minutes to talk about 5 small pets and left 1 minute, yes seriously, to talk about ferrets. You should have heard the noise that came out of my mouth when she said ferrets don't need very much space!! I questioned her on it at the end of class but she denied that she said it. I thought perhaps that I had misunderstood but was assured by my classmates that I did hear correctly. Additionally, the textbook she recommended for ferrets was certainly not the most detailed one available on the market. Things are a bit different for me because I go to vet school in Melbourne (Australia) and the ferret community is just not as prominent here as it is in N. America. For example, we had a wildlife vet come in to talk to us for 4 lectures about what happens if an echidna, platypus, kangaroo, emu, or koala comes into your clinic. We have now been taught more about handling and treating these animals than we have been taught about ferrets. You might say, well, in Australia this is a likely situation, but in Canada we are not given this many lectures on how to handle an injured moose, owl, snowshoe hare, or coyote that comes into our clinics!! This vet now deals with exotics in addition to his wildlife work. (Side note: When I asked him what kinds of conditions he has seen in ferrets I was told mange and the occasional blockage. He has never seen any adrenal or insulinoma ferrets.) Because I don't remember the exact details of the story, I will not mention names here but there is a prominent ferret vet in the US that strongly encouraged her vet school to introduce more lectures on ferrets into the curriculum and succeeded. I have been meaning to write her to get her advice on how to do this...but this will have to wait until the end of exams (this week!!!!, okay, I'm a little happy about this!!!) Of course, if this vet is reading my post perhaps she could email me and/or the FML to provide some good advice on how she recommends us vet students go about this successfully! Shelby "Chub" Kimura not a vet...yet [Posted in FML issue 3970]