To Rascal, mom, Thieffie,Miji,Diamond,Mocoa,Cola,Thumper,Star, Shelby,Shasta,Ceazar,Sa'ce,&Zazu At the request of tle, I will share my experience. I hope it helps someone, somewhere. First, let me tell you that I DO NOT believe your ferret has distemper. I hope and pray you are able to find alternative care, and I'm sure you are getting similar messages from others. On March 4, I adopted two playful 1 1/2 year old males and happily brought them into my home. They had been at the Lawrence Humane Society for a month, and were our first wonderful, loving ferret friends. Within 5 days, Cupid was lethargic. He would come out during play time and immediately curl up in a warm laundry basket instead of bouncing around like his "brother" and playing. 2 days later, he had discharge from his eye, the next day his ear was also oozing. He stopped eating and drinking, and went to the vet, who put him on antibiotics and kept him overnight. He responded well to the therapy, and our hopeful vet sent him home with an eye salve. She was afraid it was distemper, but willing to hope with us we were looking at a virus. Dogs with distemper have often been documented responding well to the treatment (often called transition), but this hadn't been seen in ferrets before, so we were excited to bring him home. 36 hours later, Cupid was having difficulty breathing, and was worse than ever. Both eyes were sealed shut, and he was disoriented and nearly unresponsive. His paws were crusty and swollen. We made the painful decision to have Cupid put down, because it was obvious he did indeed have distemper. Our shots the day we brought our fuzzies home apparently were just in time to save Bandits life, but Cupid died only two weeks after coming home. We are still very sad that this young, loving creature was needlessly exposed out of ignorance and are waging a long, sad battle to educate Lawrence about the reality of distemper being in our community. I've applied for a position on the board of directors for the Lawrence Humane Society, and hope to help this very useful organization implement new strategies for keeping ferrets in a safe, humane environment as well as creating education programs that I hope will eliminate Distemper from our community. I'll keep you in my prayers. Please don't give up on finding the real illness. Distemper is NOT your problem, because the symptoms are not the right and the length of the illness is inappropriate. Distemper is 100% fatal in ferrets, and rarely offers two weeks of symptoms before death. All the best, Julie [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 1911]