My wife and I are amazed at your story about a Maryland Breeder who apparently has made some dubious claims. We are at a total loss to even guess who the breeder you are talking about is. We know and work with most of the people in the video. A ferret pedigree is not worthless. But it really means nothing to a pet ferret that will not be used for breeding. Those among us who are actively trying to improve the breeding of ferrets use pedigrees and a knowledge of the ferrets named to keep track of good qualities and bad traits as well. LIFE certification of a shelter means no more or less than AFA, NAFA or any other certification of a shelter. We are not LIFE certified but only because we've never bothered to request certification from them. A certain well know LIFE certified shelter did infect our ferrets with ECE a couple of years ago, we were not warned that the shelter was infected until after we'd gotten there and completed an adoption. We were led to believe that the disease was not life threatening to ferrets at all. Other people have reported problems with this same shelter. BUT the conditions we keep our ferrets in apparently are not conducive to passing this disease along as none of our other ferrets had a single symptom of ECE - only the new ferret. Long after this we got into breeding no new ferret has ever shown symptoms of ECE and to our knowledge no ferret that has been over here or adopted from here has ever infected its new room mates. We do talk frankly about these issues to anyone who ever talks to us about our ferrets. Back to the pedigree and guarantee issue. We know several breeders in Maryland and have a hard time believing any of them would make a dubious claim such as having bred out these cancer genes. There are some breeders I do not trust at all. We know of lies having been told even to other breeders but not from anybody from Maryland and in the video. This is very disturbing to us because we have to trust other breeders and we actively work with many of them in many ways. There are breeders in the video we do not have a close relationship with - we saw several of them we don't really know in reviewing the video while writing this. My wife used to breed and show German shepherds. Canine pedigrees for dogs mean no more or less than ferret pedigrees. An AKC pedigree just means that the sire and dam (parents) of the puppy are also AKC registered - when a breed is recognized a list of dogs is recognized as members of that breed and become registered with the AKC. The AKC registry is most definitely NOT a true measure of quality - we have two AKC registered Pomeranians of which one is a 'quality' dog and the other is most definitely not. We guarantee that any ferret kits we've bred will not come down with genetic problems in a six month period (though we probably wouldn't be a stickler for dates) but all we can do is offer another kit for free. We wouldn't require the sick animal to be returned. If there is anything we can do to help you please let us know. You obviously wanted to not specifically name the breeder. If you tell us anything in confidence in private email I will guarantee confidentiality. bill and diane killian zen and the art of ferrets [Posted in FML issue 1245]