Hello everyone, It has been a long, long time since I have written, but perhaps a few of you still remember me. I have two wonderful ferrets named Jitterbug and Monkey. (For those of you who remember that Jitterbug had lost all of her hair and that I was agonizing over the "to have or not have surgery" question, she did not have surgery and on Christmas eve magically grew back all of her hair. She is beautiful and bushy and almost 7 years old now. Happy and never seemed healthier.) I am now about to get a cute little addition to our family in the form of a beautiful black labrador puppy named Houston (after her birthplace). I am wondering if anyone can give me suggestions for how to make this transition easier on my ferrets. I have never had ferrets and dogs together, nor have I ever trained a puppy from 8 weeks old. I am sure it will be a wonderful challange and would appreciate any and all advice (minus, never have a dog and ferrets together - I have already made the decision to have both and don't want hate mail or "I know you said you didn't want it, but listen to this horror story" mail). Also if any of you know of a mailing list for Labradors, I would know where it is so I can take the best care of all of my babies. ***Please send all responses to [log in to unmask] as I am very backed up on my FML reading and don't want to wait to hear responses. Thanks so much. Also, for those of you with ferrets that refuse to go in the litterbox when out in the house, here's a solution that I have never seen on the FML, but that has proven quite effective for me. If my ferrets were sleeping when I decide to take them out to play, I make them go in the litterbox BEFORE letting them out. They very quickly learned that to poop in the litterbox meant freedom and now look at me and run to the litterbox whenever they see me. Of course I reinforce this behavior pattern by letting them out whenever they do this, even if they were faking. But first I try to put them back in the box a couple of times and say "Monkey, go". If they get out 3 times without "going" I let them out anyway, assuming they must have gone earlier. If they were awake when I go to them, I only put them in the box once and let them fake (since if they were up and had to go, they probably would have already). While this method isn't 100%, it works better than anything else I have tried. Good luck and happy ferreting. [Posted in FML issue 2674]