Ferrets

There are tags for #cats, #dogs, and #animals in general, but no ferrets?

I've never seen anyone post about ferrets. Well, Steem, I present to you my first ferrets post and my first #showandtell.

These are my kits. They're not kits anymore as they're approaching five, but these are pictures of when I first brought them home. I don't have too many pictures to post as the older pictures need to be retrieved from various albums still, and more recent pictures tend to contain just, well, ferret-shaped blurs.

This is G. I chose him for his traditional ferret markings even though he was a little rambunctious when I got him. He has since grown into my most mellow (and lazy!) of ferrets. His favorite activities include lying on his back while scratching the hell out of the bottom of various doors. They don't even have to be closed doors. He sees a door, and he's all like, Oh, I wonder what's on the other side! and then instead of walking around he tries to squeeze under it, which almost always fails, so then he rolls to his back and just goes to town scratching like he's going to dig through it.. Mind you, I'm not complaining. The minor wear he causes to that door is far preferably to his first most favorite activity when I got him. He used to like to crawl up pant legs, roll onto his back, and then scratch the hell out of whatever soft fleshy bits his tiny paws could reach.

This is P. I chose her for her temperament and general adorableness. She did have similar habits as G, but instead of scratching the hell out of your legs, she'd crawl into a pant leg and sniff and lick at the soft fleshy bits. I don't know if the resulting dance as you try to shake her out of there while simultaneously not squishing her just amused her, but she was really good at sneaking up and tickling.

These were my first two ferrets and I had them for about a month or so before I decided to get two more. I wanted them to have play mates in case I couldn't give them the attention that they needed. Plus I wanted to make sure I had the routine down and could actually take care of the first two before I committed to getting any more.

If you've ever thought about owning ferrets, consider this: they sleep for about twenty hours a day and they adjust to whatever your schedule is for being able to play with them, so they're pretty low maintenance in that regard. But they also need constant litter changing (once or twice a day) they need to be able to roll around and rub their stink off on stuff (towels, blankets, pet beds, don't user paper bedding, ick!), they need their nails trimmed once every week or week and a half, and they need their teeth brushed once or twice a month.

If you want to train ferrets, you can motivate them with food, but they don't care about scoldings, squirt guns, or loud exclamations. Plus, they generally don't care about treats or food until you've spent a week or two convincing them that some new treat you want them to try actually is food. And then you have to pay attention to how that treat affects them. Nearly every treat I ever purchased would cause their fur to look oily or dry or flat after just a few days. And you have to be careful about what kind of food you feed them. Not just because certain ingredients will kill them, but they imprint on their food. Meaning that once they've decided that something is food, they ignore most other foods until you've undergone the painful process of training them that, no, really, this new thing you're trying to give them really is food, for the love of all that is good, would you just please eat the new stuff!

The squirt gun approach was kind of funny. Works great on cats! Ferrets just don't care. Well, that's not true, if they're thirsty, they think it's great that you're giving them a drink! They'll angle their head so they can drink the spray that's coming at them. Mostly they just ignore it and continue doing whatever they're doing. Don't even think about trying to inflict pain on their tiny little ferret bodies. Not so much because of the cruelty aspect of trying to physically induce some sort of pain on a tiny little adorable critter, no, the real reason is that they just think you're trying to play and it will encourage them to be rougher in their play, which if you have any children around them is a bad idea.

The only two tools in your toolbox for training a ferret is treats for motivation and a scruffing to discourage unwanted behaviors. It takes about a week of tossing a few treats into their food bowl along with their food so that they start to recognize the treat as food. And a scruffing is when you use your thumb and forefinger to pick them up by the fur behind their neck. This does not hurt them. Not even the slightest bit. Plus, when you do it right, they give an adorable little yawn. If you want to discourage your ferret from some bad behavior, grab them by the scruff of the neck, pick them up off the floor, then lay them down on their back and drag them a few inches by the scruff of their neck. Don't smack their tiny bodies into the floor, but do be sure to grab them by the scruff as quickly as you can after whatever bad behavior so they make the association that it was that particular behavior they shouldn't have engaged in.

This technique worked for the following behavior modifications:

• rough "biting" when playing
• scratching at various objects
• crawling into my pant leg and biting me in the calf
• "biting" the soft fleshy part of my forearm

Basically scruffing and dragging curbed every bad behavior they exhibited.

H is the other daring escape artist. Though she's less willing to leap from random high object to random high object than her sister is. Both of them had no problem leaping distances that they had no chance of making and then crashing to the floor. No matter how high up they were. They'd climb up onto your shoulders and then leap for a nearby table or stand or picture frame. Yeah, gravity just wasn't for them.

I've used "biting" in quotes a lot because they're not really biting, they're trying to encourage you to play by putting their teeth around whatever they can and give it a gentle pull. Yeah, the definition of gentle varies there.

Oh, and for litter training, I recommend not bothering with those stupid corner litter pans, when the ferrets outgrow them, they'll happily back up next to them and pee right under the edge. Good luck training that out of them over the next month and a half. I also recommend the Worlds best cat litter as it clumps up nicely, has very little dust, and was probably the first new litter I gave them that they didn't immediately shove their heads into and try to use as a dig box.

As far as tips on brushing their teeth, scruff them with one hand and brush them with the other. It's so damn simple and effective that I wish it had occurred to me sooner.

And for trimming their nails, put a few drops of ferret tone on their stomach and then trim as fast as you can. It's hard. Not because of the speed or the activity, it's hard because when they start licking the stuff of their tummies they do the cutest little impression of a sea otter on it's back...

In case you were wondering, they get along great with the dogs and cats. Except now that they're fully grown, the dogs tend to just run away from them. The cats still play with them, but since the ferrets give as well as they get, the cats generally run away after a short while, too. I do recall one scary event though. I was emptying a litter pan while Mr Kitty here was playing with P. I was honestly worried that he managed to hurt her because he was rolling around holding P with his front claws and mouth while kicking at P with his back claws. P wasn't moving. She wasn't responding to the play, and she wasn't moving even a little bit. My heart sank and I moved in for a better look and then I saw P do a slow and tired yawn before rolling to the side and closing her eyes again. Mr Kitty wanted to play and P wanted to sleep. P ignored Mr Kitty and slept through it. So it was briefly scary and then really, really funny. Ferrets have tough skin, literally, he was biting, clawing, and doing his damnedest. She rolled over and went back to sleep. It was really really funny.

Anyway, that's my first #showandtell. I hope you enjoyed it.

And if you have any ferret questions, ask away!