>And now a personal note. Between doing my work and much of the work for >a dear friend while he needs it, and having influenza I am downright >tired. If people can't recognize that when someone is tired to the bone >a little gentleness is warranted i will have to concentrate this portion >of my energies elsewhere for a while just to give myself a break from >uncalled for nastiness. Waiting for someone to say "oh no we need you?" Yes I am tired and hurting too. I have lupus, chronic fatigue and severe depression. Yet I do not trot them out constantly as an excuse as to why I seem hateful. I own up to it. And yep you guessed it right now is one time. First you took a potshot at me without mentioning my name awhile back. Let's see, something about me checking on credentials. Bothering some dear friend of yours. Why should it bother you when someone tries to check into credentials of someone putting themselves forth as some type of ferret expert? You certainly do it. You give advice etc telling folks when or not to talk to vets. Yet what degree do you have? I honestly appreciate the time you seem to put forth in passing along information. You are doing a lot of grunt work, giving clues to where information can be found. I frankly don't have the time or inclination to spend the better part of my days doing that. Unfortunately, I have seen you and others speak with authority about how to treat illness in ferrets. That is ok, since you are an experienced OWNER. But you are a far cry from being trained and you need to realize that when you write or present yourself the way you do, people will assume you have some serious background into the subjects at hand. I spoke in vague terms about Dr. Kawasaki simply because I had at best, second hand recalled information. So you took that as me slamming some person I don't know. I don't do that. I have no doubt he believes what he reported. I simply said that for me, it isn't a big enough sample for me to base a decision on. I do hope you will be more careful in what information you pass along, and in what terms you pass it along in. Making a blanket statement about the effects of something, when the truth is the heart of the matter is still unknown, bothers me. And if I recall correctly you have a background in soft sciences at least, so you should know better. If you want to act as a research assistant to this community, I applaud you for it. However, hold yourself to that. And to the standards it requires. Blessings, Margie [Posted in FML issue 5190]