>From: M H <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: MEDIOCRE HOMES ARE ACCEPTABLE??? I highly resent your tone. Yoiu are making very bad assumptinos and using emotionally charge accusations rather than intellectually discussing this issue. >HELLO!?! A ferret shelter is NOT a prison Well actually sort of it is. Ferrets in cells/cages. They can't leave when they want to. They sit and wait to be paroled/adopted. That was an emotionally charged accusation. I never said that shelters were prisons. They more resemble orphanages. Would you like to live in an orphanage when a reasonable family wanted to adopt you but couldn't because of some rule set down from on high? >How DARE you suggest that a shelter operator let a ferret go to live in >a mediocre home?!? YO!!!!!!! We have run a shelter for longer than many of those who brag on every ferret they rescue to this list! Sorry. I just get real tired of people who forget about that bit of information inconvinient to those who like to put me as opposed to shelters in general. As our friends in NC pointed out, not all shelters are the same. BUT they are still not in a home, just waiting to go to one. When they get into a home they will have a chance to get more personal treatment. Sheer numbers force that to be the case despite all the efforts of shelter owners. By and large most people are good. That carries over into almost all subclasses, so most shelter people are good. But like with human orphans a real home is far better than limbo. >Would you let any of your ferrets go live in a home where you weren't >sure of the conditions? Yes. Every ferret ever adopted out really has gone through that. We as shelter operators can only guess what happens when we are not there at ANY house. >How would you sleep knowing that your ferret was possibly unvaccinated, >eating poor quality food, or being neglected? At every shelter I've visited there were times when there were som many ferrets that they WERE neglected. Poor things. Orphanages have by and large been frowned on in this country for people. They aren't better for ferrets. And perhaps you should think that I didn't say a "bad" home did I? You are using rather bad descriptions to define merely mediocre. >Would you have a clear conscience if you found out that the ferret >you released into a mediocre home had been bounced from home to home >to home, no longer wanted? Every shelter that has been around long enough can tell you times this has happened. Even with screening. >and now fearful of humans? A ferret wouldn't reach this state from living in an average home. Lets discus what I said only. I didn't say adopt out ferrets to the evil rich folks that pick their pets based on their current decor or the trashy folks that keep getting more dogs when their old ones freeze in the winter. That would hardly be average or mediocre would it? >Ferret shelters are run mostly out of a deep love for ferrets Do you speak fom experience here? You didn't use a name, just initials on a hot mail account that could merely be "mediocre home". Too often those of us in the 'shelter biz' have to deal with cleaning up after shelters that took in dozens and dozens of ferrets, unable to find anyone that that met their 'high' standards of life for ferrets until it reached the point that the ferrets would have been better off almost anywhere else. This has happened in ALL geographical areas in the country. Haven't heard about one yet this month. I do speak from years of experience. bill -- bill and diane killian zen and the art of ferrets http://www.zenferret.com/ mailto:[log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 2859]