I wanted to take a moment to add a bit to Sam's post regarding any concerns with Ferrets Across America. As many of you know, I created the Ferrets Across America program some time ago. It is a huge, huge job, and it can be really hard to deal with at times. All the Coordinator wants to do is to unite ferrets with owners, wherever that may be. The program was wildly successful, and pretty much embraced by the ferret community. But with every transport, there were some problems that arose, never anything that would affect the safety of the ferrets - just problems in coordinating everyone to where they must be and when. It became too much for me to handle effectively. I had to turn down transports because I was afraid that I would not be able to devote the time needed to successfully transport the ferrets. I work full-time, in addition to running my shelter, which is my first priority, plus I am involved in a lot of other ferret-related activities. To best serve the needs of FAA, I resigned. It's taken a long time until this program has come up and running since my successor also resigned for similar reasons. I have been trying to find someone that would be terrific in running this program all along. From the beginning, I always thought that Sam would be a great person for the job, but due to the fact that she resides out of the U.S., I never offered her the job. When she eventually approached me, I quickly agreed to let her give it a shot. Sam is now in charge of the FAA program, but I will continue to advise her for as long as she needs me to help her out. It does not matter at all that Sam doesn't live here when it comes to running FAA. When I ran it from here in Pennsylvania, I coordinated transports on the west coast. There's no difference between half a country away and half a world away when you are coordinating transports via e-mail, ICQ, and telephone. She can do just as effective a job from there as I could from here. If a problem arose in Nevada when I was in PA, there was nothing I could physically do about it (i.e., fly there) and the same goes for Sam from New Zealand. Furthermore, Sam will have something I never did - she is appointing State Coordinators who will assist her in each transport. If a transport is going through three states, there will be three co-coordinators to help her along. This way, if there is a problem in any state, the state co-ordinator will have a much better ability to help out than I would have ten states away, or Sam, several countries away. And for anyone who doesn't know Sam, I will say this: she knows more people in the United States than any other person I know. She has the resources available to handle this job better than even I ever could. She works from home, she is on her computer every waking hour of her day, she has access to her e-mail at all times, and as many of us know, she *does* call the United States a bit more than her phone bill likes to show! :o) I will end by saying that if I needed to have a ferret transported for any reason, there really is no person that I know that I would trust more to handle the trip than Sam. She's really got a great plan in place for Ferrets Across America, and I think she will be wildly successful at it. I would entrust her, and hope that you all will do the same. For more information about Ferrets Across America, please visit the FAA site at: http://users.1st.net/hammock/ferrets/faa/ If you have questions about FAA you may e-mail Sam at [log in to unmask], or if you have any concerns that you would like to ask me about, feel free to e-mail me at [log in to unmask] Kymberlie Barone Director Pennsylvania Ferret Rescue Association of Montgomery County http://www.ferretrescue.com [Posted in FML issue 2873]