I'm going to get this out quickly and move on. I agree with Rebecca Murdock and others on this. We already have clubs and groups that handle show standards and such. What is needed now is an organisation that brings are lovable fuzzies up to the same or higher level than the dog. We need some political clout to get legal issues changed in our favor. These horrible things happen because nobody sees a ferret as a loveble family pet, but as some strange, exotic, wild animal. Now, dogs have got the status of "mans best friend" and that makes people think about a dog as very close to human. Even though there are several times more dog bite incidents in our country than ferret bite incidents, no one would dare think about taking an eight year old's puppy away and killing it because it bit someone at the vet. And why not? Because the dog is mans best friend, and has been thought of as so for hundreds of years. They too started off as hunting and protection tools. But then, very influetial people, even royalty, started keeping and breeding them as companion animals and started a tradition of prestiege associated with owning and breeding dogs. This is how it all starts. We want are pets to have the same legal status as dogs. To get that we need political power of our own. How do you get political power? The same way politicians do. You convince a large group of people to support you by telling them just how much better you are than anybody else. Then you hire lobbists to tell the bigwigs how big your group of supporters is and how by helping your group get what they want, they increse their own group of supporters. To sum up, Good Image=Political Power=Legal Change. I am willing to support this effort in any way I can. CHERYL [Posted in FML issue 1976]