I am not sure if it was recent, it in the past, but I was reading through the FML (i've been reading archives so much my head is spinning) and came across the problem of people bringing in sick ferrets and leaving, then coming back for them a whie later once the shelter/rescue paid for their medical issues. Just unacceptable. Detestable. I was at work today (I'm a delivery driver... too much time to think!) thinking about the problem. The only thing that really stuck out was... keep track of the drop offs. Here's the idea real quick like. Someone comes in to drop their ferret off. Shelter says 'Ok, but we need you to fill out this form, if you could, please'. Form has 2 sections... Section 1 - Owner - Has something to the effect of Name, License # and reason for drop off. Section 2 - Animal - Basic things, like name and age... simple, non-complicated questions... If anyone asks about the License #, make a shelter policy saying no more than 4 animals may be dropped off by a non-cleared individual or something and that the license # is used to track that, which in truth is correct with the system i'm thinking of. Then this info is inputed into a website database (secure, of course) that I could contribute atleast the programing to (i'm not so good at making things look nice, I just make sure they do their job!). This way, when someone comes to adopt a pet, you can 'cross referance' them, see how many pets they've dropped off, see who they dropped off, whatnot. It could be considered as a 'clearing' or 'screening' advantage. Even useful for far beyond ferrets. What if all us animal lovers could come togeather and create an association for tracking the sale/forfeture of even 2% of the pet population... Maybe it's wishful thinking, maybe it's foolish... but then, I was always told to remember that some of the most common place things today started with a wee little idea. To all the ferts who have come and gone, for all of those still yet to come, and because of the ones with us today... that's why we do what we do... eh? Jacob, Chance, Stinky and Shadow (meow!) [Posted in FML issue 4223]