How To Get A Better Ferret Vet
By Mary R. Shefferman
Ferret veterinarians are hard to come by; good ferret vets are even harder to find. What do you do when you want the best vet for your ferret, but you can't find one?
You create one.
Although ferrets are much more common than they were 10 years ago, many veterinary schools still don't require students to learn about them. If vet students do learn about ferrets in the general curriculum, it's often only the basics. For the most part, vets who want to treat ferrets have to put the effort into learning about them on their own.
There are many excellent vets out there who just don't know about ferrets. We're fortunate that there are now many ways for vets to get information about ferrets. Veterinary journals now regularly publish articles about ferret medical issues (this wasn't so only a few years ago).
Part of any vet's job is to continue learning about the animals he or she treats. Just as human doctors go to seminars and read journals and books to learn about new diseases and treatments, so do vets. If your vet doesn't know much about ferrets, he or she can learn about them.
Although there is a lot of veterinary level information about ferrets on the Internet, many vets are reluctant to follow advise from someone whose credentials they can't check out. It's understandable. The Internet has a lot of crackpots publishing incorrect or partly correct information. Likewise, many vets are reluctant to take medical instruction and information from lay-people. We've gotten emails from readers who have tried to give their vets information about a ferret illness, but found that their vets wasn't interested in the information.
How do you create a good ferret vet if your vet doesn't trust your information or information you find on the Internet? There are several excellent veterinary texts you can recommend to your vet -- or that you can get for your vet. The books below are all available at Amazon.com, where there is plenty of information about the authors and publishers. These are the top ferret veterinary texts available. Much of what your vet needs to know about ferrets is in these books:
The gift of a book is not going to help only your ferrets, but every ferret that your vet sees. Although these books can be a bit expensive, they're well worth the investment.
Ferrets, Rabbits, and Rodents is THE ferret
vet bible.
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Biology & Diseases of the Ferret has been a staple of ferret veterinary medicine for many years.
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Radiology of Rodents, Rabbits and Ferrets discusses correct positioning of ferrets for x-rays and other topics.
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Essentials of Ferrets is a practice-oriented veterinary text -- and Dr. Purcell is a ferret owner herself, so she understand the emotional needs of ferrets.
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For a non-U.S. approach to ferret medicine, Ferret Husbandry, Medicine and Surgery is an interesting read.
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Thanks for reading FerretNews! We hope you learned something today. We'll be back in a few days with more ferrety information. In the meantime, get some cool ferrety stuff for spring & save a little dough!
--Mary & Eric & Gabby, the lone modern ferret
modernferret.com
