Q: "Why did you say at the symposium that the [ferret] dental problem is so important that you are willing to go anywhere to talk about it? Aren't they just worn teeth?" Q: "At the symposium I heard you say you would you go anywhere to talk to any clubis that true? What subjects would you talk about?" A: Hey, I said a lot of things at the symposium, but the trauma of losing my shorts in front of everyone made my brain trash most of them. Speaking of trash, do you know why there are no garbage cans in Congress? The Republicans toss their garbage at the Democrats, the Democrats throw theirs at the Republicans, and the reporters take it all out and put it on TV. If you think that is pathetic, just remember who is watching the TV... I absolutely would go anywhere and everywhere I could possibly schedule to visit. I would even go where I know some of the people didnt like me, or even hated me...well, with a single exception. My only requirement is that the group (or groups) pays for the cost of gas (or plane ticket). I've already agreed to speak at 18 events from coast to coast during 2005 (some already visited), and I can no longer afford to pick up all costs now that gas is so expensive. In most cases, I'd prefer to drive, but it just depends on the situation. Hey, I'm not afraid of flying; I just enjoy driving so much. Oh yeah, in the past I've willingly stopped and talked to other groups while traveling, but because people are paying for the trip, I won't be making unscheduled stops. If you want me to stop, I'll let you contact the other groups and work out shared arraignments for gas costs. I try to adapt each talk to the requirements of the people making the request, but I have five presentations that are on Powerpoint, overhead transparencies, and printed on poster boards, so I can meet the audio-visual needs of any location (I usually bring all three in case of unforeseen problems). The presentations are: A) Dental Damage in Ferrets Caused by Kibble, B) Carbohydrates and the Ferret's Diet, C) Environmental Enrichment for Ferrets, D) Ferret Domestication, and E) Ten Things Every Vet Should Know About Ferrets (And A Few Things About Ferret Owners). Each presentation can be timed to last 30, 45, or 60 minutes, and I can present any or all of them at any single talk. I can also play the "Stump Bob C With Your Questions" game, and I think I've been stumped twice or thrice in the last 5 years. My only caveat is that I am not a vet, so I will not practice veterinary medicine by diagnosing ferret medical problems, discuss specific medications and doses, or try to double guess any vet that is treating a particular ferret. I will discuss those issues in a general sense -- even tell you if you need a second opinion -- but nothing specific. Right now I am pushing the ferret dental disease issue as hard as I can, which is why I decided not to go to New Zealand this year so I could give this important issue the effort it deserves. I faced the ethical dilemma of knowing kibble was causing a serious problem and not saying much, or educate people about the harm and not going to New Zealand. Not much of an ethical dilemma really. Kibble-worn teeth is a serious problem, and because the FML perhaps reaches only maybe a thousandth of the people that own ferrets, there are really only three ways to combat it: convince vets, convince pet owners, and convince kibble makers. I am trying my best to do all three as soon as possible, and the best way to do that is away from the FML and in person, showing the photos, the teeth if I need to, proving the problem exists to both lay persons and experts, and immediately answering all questions. What I present are the findings of my skeletal research -- more than six years of measuring and documenting the changes in ferrets due to domestication. What I am basically doing is opening up the dental findings to public scrutiny. This type of openness in scientific research is not unprecedented, but it is generally quite unusual. I am showing everything and letting people come to the conclusions themselves... in essence, placing my own neck on the chopping block for anyone with a better idea. Can you imagine the public humiliation that could occur if anyone saw the photos, recognized I made a mistake, and then proclaimed my ineptitude in the identification of bone and dental pathology? I'm taking a great public risk; I am either a complete idiot, know what I am talking about (perhaps both). Well, if I am an idiot, then so are the pathologists, dentists, and veterinarians that have reviewed the photos and teeth, so we can all be in the same club. There is no smoke and mirrors here; I will show you what happens to the teeth when a ferret habitually bites a cage, chews toys, and eats kibble. You will see what happens to the bone supporting the teeth when periodontal disease is allowed to remain in the ferret's mouth. You will get to see how frequent abscesses are, how often ferrets lose teeth, and exactly why ferrets cannot use their back molars for chewing. That risk exists not just from those who honestly recognize a mistake, but also from those who might decide to confuse the issue by creating controversy rather than addressing the issues in an honest way. What if someone saw the photos and decided to muddy the issue by proposing dozens of unlikely hypothetical causes, or to even choose the more disingenuous route by proclaiming, "We really don't know what is a safe rate of dental wear!" You already see this type of confusion with the issue of carbohydrates in the ferret's diet. Let me explain this in a bit more detail. It has been long proven that mink, weasels, polecats, and ferrets have noas in zerocarbohydrate requirement (I have references that go back 50 years). It is not a mustelid trait in general, but it seems all members of the Genus Mustela lack carbohydrate requirements, which includes weasels, stoats, mink, polecats, and ferrets. All these species are considered "hypercarnivores," which is determined by the ratio of molar area to remaining tooth surfaces (the ferret has zero molar surface area for grinding food). Hypercarnivory is highly correlated to the natural diet (evolutionary diet), and while these species may opportunely consume a small amount of carbohydrates from bowel contents or seasonal fruits, these are infrequent and quite different in makeup and quantity from the daily influx of highly processed carbohydrates found in kibble. Additionally, the oft resorted to hypothesis that domestication "must have changed the nutritional requirements of ferrets" requires SOME degree of proof, of which there is absolutely none (these are suppositions, having little evidence and no proof. One of my professors used to say that if people put suppositions where they put suppositories, there would be a lot fewer muddled up debates). Additionally, it assumes such a change could have survived the all-too-common practice of breeding ferrets back to polecats, which is so commoneven nowthat geneticists have been unable to define which polecat is the progenitor. The suggestion that such a shift might have occurred during the "milk-and-bread" portion of ferret captivity again is a supposition that requires proof, especially important considering they were also being bred back to polecats at the same time. The hypothesis that the changes only occurred in North American ferrets eating kibble has absolutely no proof (or even evidence), plus it cannot answer the ongoing problem of insulinoma in European ferrets, estimated by several European vets to roughly match the rates seen in North American ferrets. One European vet told me they see insulinoma tumors in 60%-70% of ferrets, which is close to what I have seen in the necropsies I perform on the ferrets in the skeletal study (not all insulinomas result in observable disease, or only cause infrequent problems). [Posted in FML issue 4876]