Jessica wrote: >Dr. Ruth responding saying that she no longer uses Benadryl to >premedicate because she was still seeing reactions with it and also >because she had heard of ferrets having reactions to the Benadryl >itself. She now uses dexamethasone instead and has seen a reduced >number of reactions that way. > >You can read her full post at http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL2771. Our vet has seen the same thing. For a while there had been a concern that the use of steroids might reduce the body's ability to respond sufficiently to the vaccine. When titers for canine distemper protection have been done on our own that does not seem to be the case for our crew. Some of ours have very high levels after 2 or 3 years. The steroids did not seem to diminish effect in our own crew. My hope is that once the challenge study is done to show what the titer numbers actually mean in ferrets that any canine distemper vaccine which provides high enough numbers (as Galaxy did for ours) will be permissible for show use. I suspect it will be much longer before we have the data needed to know about vaccinating for rabies less often. Getting that is even more complicated with a higher private funding need and only special places where it can be done. I've seen distemper in a dog and in a raccoon, and rabies in a small brown bat and how their behaviors were changed by those viruses reproducing in their brains. That is not a torment I ever want to again see in another animal. Diseases like that make heartbreaks like JL look less terrible in comparison. Hey, my new computer just got delivered. Sukie (not a vet) Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.miamiferret.org/ http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html [Posted in FML 6366]