Thought I would relay this story. A few years ago I had to put down a male sable.."Jasper" that did his best to fight cancer of the spleen. By the time it was diagnosed the choice was chemo or prednisolone (sp?) , to which we chose the latter. To the present: with our annual check-up and shots, a new partner at our vets did an initial diagnosis of a tumor in Holly's spleen and checked this against Hannah's spleen. Luckily we asked for a second opinion by the senior vet at the clinic (who also had previous experience with Holly). The point of all this: Holly has always been considered a fairly large, solid female sable. The second vet knew this and upon checking her felt she has not changed and feels no cause for alarm but we will keep a closer eye on her. He felt that the first vet was accurate in feeling a "larger than normal" spleen but that had always been the case with Holly. Comparing this ferret to our smaller siamese only made Holly's spleen seem extra large (Hannah is a very small, skinny gal). I'm certainly not trying to disuade anyone from believing their vet, especially with the prevalence of this disease, but this is a case where experience with a particular animal helped. After losing one little guy to this disease we were almost devastated when the first vet make his claim. If any vets out there...or others with a similar experience, have any comments I would be interested to hear them. Thanks and enjoy your little friends!! Scott and the girls [Posted in FML issue 0868]