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How Can You Help Your Local Ferret Shelter?

© Pam McInnis

Across the United States and around the world there are shelters housing abandoned and unwanted ferrets. While the number of shelter owners and operators seems to be growing, the resources they need to assist their charges remain scarce. With limited time, financial and human resources, shelter owners scramble to provide the ferrets in their care with warm safe places to sleep, food, medical attention, love, and hopefully a permanent home to call their own.

WHAT DO FERRET SHELTERS DO?

· Rescue and provide a place to live to unwanted, lost and abandoned ferrets.

· Provide food, water, litter and bedding to the ferrets in their care.

· Many shelters pay for veterinary assistance and even surgery for the ferrets in their care.

· Provide play time, attention and human contact to ferrets who were often neglected in their previous homes.

· Many shelters work to rehabilitate ferrets who are currently unadoptable due to behavioral issues such as biting.

· Work to find loving, stable and permanent homes for their furry charges.

· Educate their surrounding communities about the needs of ferrets.

Many shelter operators set out with the intentions of serving as a ferret rescue operation. But if you had asked many of them a few years ago if they'd ever own a shelter, some would probably have said no. Ferrets have a way of weaseling into your heart. You bring home your first ferret, and decide a few months down the road that she needs a companion. Then you worry that if something happened to one of your ferrets, the other would be severely depressed, so you find yourself with a third. Then a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend buys a ferret and finds out they aren't for him, and since he's heard you already have three he figures what's one more, and asks you to take in his pet. Then you get friendly with the owner of the pet shop where you buy your ferret food and your veterinarian, and when people leave unwanted ferrets on their doorsteps they call and see if you can help. Over time, you realize you've fallen in love with the business of saving ferrets, so you open a true shelter.

While most shelter operators agree that rescuing ferrets is a rewarding and fulfilling labor of love, they also acknowledge that they face many serious issues. These include: · Financial resources to provide enough food, housing, bedding, litter and other necessary items.

· Space issues as more and more unwanted ferrets come under their care.

The copyright of the article How Can You Help Your Local Ferret Shelter? in Ferrets is owned by Pam McInnis. Permission to republish How Can You Help Your Local Ferret Shelter? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.