I am hoping that some of you have encountered this before: I have a 2 1/2 (+/-) male ferret that came to me along with his female cage mate last October. They were surrendered to me by a gal that had saved them from an abandond apartment. This woman had found out the owner of this pair had stolen a bunch of drugs and skipped town and as best as she could figure, they had been alone for possibly 4 days. She had them for several months but could not afford their care. Unfortunately, she did not know much about ferrets and was feeding them cheap cat food and vanilla ice cream. But, at least, she saved their lives. This pair has health problems that my vet and I are still discovering. Ozzie had an EKG several weeks ago that was totally funky. Deanna has breathing problems that seemed to be asthma. They both very easily contract upper resp infections. (They have had three since April.) Keep in mind that they came out of a drug house and the lady that had them for several months had four smokers in her house. Now, to my problem, Ozzie is scared to death of a medicine dropper. The first time that I tried to give him amoxi-drops, he threw up before I even had the dropper to his mouth. I am convinced that both of these babies were forced to ingest some sort of drug or another. The amoxi-drops I can mix in with ferrivite or a mush that I make for him and he will eat it. But since he just finished a course of this a week ago and is back to sneezing and running nose my vet has put him on clavimox. Ozzie will not eat this in anything that I have mixed it in. This morning I very carefully scruffed him and held him close to me and very slowly managed to get about half the dose into him. But tonight when I tried to do the same, he turned his head back totally to his side and shut his eyes so tight as if to wish to disappear. It broke my heart; I can't stand to stress him so--he shuts down on me so easily. I held him for 20 minutes, rocking, kissing, whispering to him until he finally relaxed and fell asleep. Has any of you had ferrets that came from a situation like this? I had a hard time getting my vet to believe me that there are addicts out there that will give drugs to their pets, but after seeing Ozzie's EKG, he has conceded to this sad fact. I have read that crystal meth can cause irreagular heart beats. How do you get a medicine with an unpleasent taste into a ferret that has this kind of history? Thank you in advance, Bonnie and the gang at Nikki's House [Posted in FML 6044]