Good job on your new newsletter! I read the heartworm articles and am sorry that you have met that parasite. We are lucky that it is rare here, though we have our own problem parasites. NJ leads the country in Lyme rates because ground nesting rodents are the disease reservoir and white footed mice -- which do very well in NJ -- are the optimal rodent host for deer tick nymphs. In NJ in studies the Lyme Disease infection rate among tested ticks has been 20 to 40 percent. No, deer are not the disease reservoir at all for this disease; they are just a common host for the same tick stages as about 30 types of wildlife, several domestic animals, and humans. BTW, this is already a bad tick year in some parts of the country, including here. They have come under discussion -- with some very useful info and URLs -- in the Ferret Health List on Smartgroups recently and you can find those posts by going to either the site or the archives with the archives probably being the easier: http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth There is even one ASPCA Poison Control link at the end of a post where I to the procedures used for controlling West Nile and how they do or do not impact of pets, but all of the rest are tick related. Back to heartworm: Since the initial review of studies on Proheart use in dogs showed that problems are extremely rare although highly publicized I hope that Proheart will again become available. It is the only thing so far with a high rate of success at saving ferrets who already have heartworm so is a very important med to have available for ferret health. It is sad to realize that there are ferrets who could have been saved but who have died due to it not being available during the review period. See: http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/heartworm.htm [Posted in FML issue 4899]