As you can see I'm a few days behind on my reading but I wanted to respond to T. Miller's question on the Compendium in Canada. You are correct in assuming that the compendium is for the US only, however as we discovered, it still carries a lot of weight here in Canada. Canada hasn't done their own studies on rabies in ferrets (at least not that we were able to find) so what we did here in Edmonton, Alberta was to give our local Capital Health authorities a copy of the compendium's recommendations as well as statistics on ferret versus dog/cat bites which we took off the net. That followed up by a meeting with the Medical Officer of Health resulted, in very short order, in a press release from Capital Health stating that they were recommending that properly vaccinated ferrets involved in bite situations be kept under observation for 10 days. As with the compendium it unfortunately also recommends that stray ferrets be euthanized. We're still working on changing that one. I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that Capital Health is a regional authority and just like the US we need to deal with each area separately so I encourage all Canadian ferret lovers to mail a copy of the 1998 Compendium to your local authorities and to follow up with them. For us this was just the first step. We want to know how these recommendations get to those people that make the life or death decisions for ferrets. We want to be certain that they know about the Capital Health's recommendations and are following them. And we want them to know that we are ready and willing to take in any ferret who requires quarantine. Our goal is for Alberta (the entire province) to follow a 10 day quarantine procedure for all ferrets. Thanks to the 1998 Compendium we have the information necessary to make Canadian authorities listen. Barb Gustafson (aka Boots) Alberta Ferret Society You can respond to this e-mail online. If you have ICQ my ICQ# is 1092229 If you don't have ICQ you can page me through: * My Personal Communication Center: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/1092229 (go there and try it!) * Or you can send me e-mail to [log in to unmask] You can download ICQ at http://www.icq.com/ [Posted in FML issue 2309]