John, your sentence >And as far as "educating" general shelters about ferrets, as Sukie >mentioned, forget it. could be read in the WRONG way (i.e. not what I said) -- but only by people who miss your punctuation -- as meaning that I said that we can forget educating general shelters or it could be read the right way: that I think that HOW to educate general shelters is a worthwhile topic. It has not been tried in many areas, but people on the FML through the years have posted MIXED RESULTS when they have tried so it is not impossible. Hard. Yes, and in some cases it is going to be as frustrating and difficult as anyone could imagine. This is exactly why it would be useful, rather than throw one's hands up in the air, for those who are having problems to get specific (because then the suggestions can be better tailored), and why it is especially important for those who have had successes when others haven't to come forward and discuss what worked, how much could be achieved, what is still needed, etc. Very few successes for ferrets have been easy ones. The time frame from start to getting them on the Compendium for Animal Rabies Prevention and Control with the same recommended protections as cats and dogs was ten years and involved many steps. First a vaccine had to be found that was effective enough for federal approval, and it needed to be safe enough for the ferrets (not all were, and Dr. Judy Bell whose praises have been sung here before herself decided to adopt those ferrets and provided them with the care and love they needed, with the results that they were happy and one turned out to even be an exceptionally long lived one if my memory serves), and the vaccines had to be effective for at least a year (again, not all were; one gave protection for only 6 months so that also was removed from consideration). The next step was also a long term and costly one: the CDC needed to accrue enough data on how rabies strains behave in ferrets for it to be known that they would be safe. There were some European studies from France and Germany that were encouraging, and a past U.S. study had already shown that ferrets don't contract rabies from eating diseased animals. When the CDC work was done it took extremely little time (I once knew the figure -- something like a few months) for that knowledge to save more ferrets than had been used in all of the studies combined. Some of the earlier losses hurt in especially tragic ways, such as Kodo who was killed enough though the man thought he might just have a claw or cage scratch and was willing to do the shots, or the ones we'd hear of where EXes from a couple would false report biting incidents to cause deaths of the ferrets as way to inflict pain on the person. Legalization in some of the states and cities took pretty much as long. In fact, some of those allowed ferrets only after the above accomplishment which owed a huge amount to the ferret community. Most of the health advances have similarly been very hard won. Now we are through the first 2 parts of an effort to improve federal regulations for ferrets. There were some tries before. The first one that I can think of was begun by Juliana if my memory serves. Boy, was she ever on the right track, but I don't think that back then many ferret people realized it yet. This the is sort of effort that we have always known has to involves a lot of people and a lot of time going through the required steps. I think that it has to be at least 10 years since Juliana first tried and there was some other tries in between. Progress does not come easy all that often for ferrets. Still, it has happened, and it will happen again. It is important to not think that just because one person couldn't achieve a given task that no one will. That others have made headway with educating some general shelters means that it can be done, but not in the way being tried. This is the sort of task -- like several of the aforementioned ones -- where not everyone is ideal for each part of the effort. It may take sales skills, or a veterinary background. It may take print outs of materials written by vets, or vet texts. It likely will come down to dividing aspects of the work according to individual skill sets. Needing to find out what has worked and what is needed in a given location is a world away from being impossible. Hopefully, people will come forward with constructive information or with ideas that perhaps are worth trying. The list has been very quiet in general, though. I think that a large proportion of the people normally here are away on vacation. -- Sukie (not a vet, and not speaking for any of the below in my private posts) Recommended health resources to help ferrets and the people who love them: Ferret Health List http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth FHL Archives http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ AFIP Ferret Pathology http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html Miamiferrets http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/ International Ferret Congress Critical References http://www.ferretcongress.org [Posted in FML issue 5321]