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Taz:

Taz's story

Taz is a male albino ferret. He was purchased by Sandi in March of 1997 at the same time that she bought Banjo for me. She really wanted me to buy Taz, but I preferred the darker sable (which I still do). That day I still wasn't sure what to do with a ferret, but we had made some arrangements to buy her cage and she ended up buying a larger cage as she now had two fuzzies.

I know she left the boys at the house with her ferrets and we must have gone to the store for something. When we got back to my house, Roger said the boys had called in tears. It seems Simon was dragging Taz around the house by his ear. We now know that this is normal ferret behavior as one is always the alpha ferret and so on down the line. Taz is much bigger than Simon is now but he still lets Simon be the dominant one to him.

Taz does fight with some of the other new ferrets on occasion, but loses every battle. Today is July 31,1998 and he is on amoxicilin for a respiratory infection. He went in Tues. for his shots, and they found he was running a fever. He goes back next Weds. for a check up and maybe his shots.

Taz does not like it outside. I figure it's because the sunlight must hurt his eyes.

Last year before Sandi got her puppy; I remember her saying that Taz had not been seen for a couple of days. After the puppy arrived, both Simon and Taz got stressed out (downright scared) so the two of them came here to live.

I know he investigated some things as Roger had to take the dryer apart in order to get him out of it. Roger also took care of his entrance to it so that he didn't get in there again.

To get to the point, Taz took to going to bed earlier and earlier. It got to the point that he didn't even stop to play at all. He was real skinny when he got here, so I didn't realize how much weight he could have lost. This time he lost 1.2 lbs. And he's just as skinny now as then. He's still playing now. It took us quite awhile to get him well last year, and I hope we caught it in time this year. Last year we blamed it on stress. At that time he had swollen lymph glands, probably due to stress or an infection.

I'm inclined to think of it as an infection that just wasn't caught in time. Next year, I'll watch closer when he loses his winter coat and winter weight. We'll start the extra vitamins before now. I think that if he hadn't been due for his shots and if I wasn't concerned about the weight loss being extreme, this infection could have continued until he'd have been as sick as last year.

Last year the first antibiotic didn't work and really must have tasted terrible. The antibiotic that he is on this time is the one that worked last year. It also must taste bad, but not quite as terrible. Oh yes, Taz goes through an eye dropper pretty fast. He bites it when given his medicine and eventually gets holes in it. As a result of the nasty tasting things that I forced down his throat, he wanted nothing to do with me for a long time. He didn't bite or anything, just went out of his way to stay as far away from me as possible. He was just beginning to come around to forming a bond between us, when this happened. So I'm trying to spoil him some, and help the healing process. He gets a good helping of ferretvite after his medicine morning and night. That way he has something to look forward to after the nasty stuff. I noticed that tonight he didn't fight me as much as usual, and I didn't end up wearing a lot of the medicine.

In order to give him medicine, you have to scruff him, then put him next to you with his feet and legs held against your stomach. He'll use them just like hands to push you away from him. If I weren’t concerned about getting the medicine down him, I'd really appreciate the way he uses his paws.

He doesn't like to be held, but will give kisses sometimes. He will play now and has even been known to attack me to get attention. This has just been in the spring, so we'll see how it goes after he gets well.

He is also the only one that does not like treats of any kind. He is sniffing the food when I am filling the dishes, but still will not take one out of my hand or container that holds their food. And as far as I can tell, he still only eats the Iams Kitten food. That's one reason that I still have bowls for both kinds of food. I just mixed some Shepherd and Green's ferret food in with the Totally Ferret food, and that is in two of the bowls. The other dish is just Iams. He also likes to drink from the water bottle, so he is the reason that I keep one water bottle on the cage.

Since the water bowls and food dishes are attached to the sides of the cages, I don't worry about them dumping them. Although Hallie and Hamilton will use their paws to try to clean the surface of the water off before drinking. Since they have fresh water everyday, I figure it's just some instinct that the two of them share.

Neither him nor Simon ever use the litter box. They never even had one before and just don't seem to see the need to use one now.

He lost his winter coat in about three weeks or so. And boy, did he lose it. I had a solid layer of white hair in the hair catcher after his bath. All of them lost their winter coats, but his was the biggest shedding of all of them. I will watch it again next spring. I will be prepared.

Today is August 19, 1998

Taz is spending the night at the vets. I can't really talk or write about it now, but the news does not look promising. I will tell it all after this is over.

I'm not sure it's over yet, but I'm not feeding him as much duck soup as I was. He has put most of his weight back on. Today is the 13th of Sept. 1998.

He got to the point that he was going to take a nap almost as soon as I let them out for playtime. He went from 3.6 lbs. to 2.4 lbs. when I took him in for his shots. The vet put him on antibiotics for two weeks, and then he went back for a check up. I had started him on duck soup with ensure in it. He had only put on .3 of a pound, so the vet wanted to run a blood test on him. To make it short, Taz refused to give him any blood. They tried his neck in several attempts, then the inside of his back legs, and couldn't get enough to run the tests.

He kept him over night, put him to sleep the next morning, took the blood, and did exploratory surgery on him. Both blood tests were fasting tests, the one that they couldn't get the night before and the one in the morning. The surgery showed nothing abnormal, as he checked all internal organs. The blood test did have a low insulin(still in the normal range) and a high blood sugar. He said that he was going to do some checking on that as it was 205 or somewhere in that range.

Of course, I was worried about diabetes. And all reports on that in ferrets are negative, as they are too small to regulate the insulin. Although the vet said in his checking that the stress of trying to get the blood, of not feeling good, and staying the night there, could run the blood sugar level up, I was still worried. I changed the Ensure to heavy whipping cream in his duck soup. That has really put the weight on him. He was up to 3.4 lbs. at his last check up. He goes back on Weds. the 16th for another check up. If he is doing okay, he will get his shots. I am supposed to be cutting back on his duck soup, but I am still giving him some as I felt that he was losing weight when not getting it. I have to stop today, so the vet will know if he's still losing weight without it.

He has actually war danced and tried to play with me some. But again, with cutting back on the duck soup, the play time has lessened. So he may have a problem that we cannot get to the bottom of, but we will do the best we can for him.

His tail is still dirty looking, and the hair is less than it should be. I will ask the vet if he thinks it's black heads and what to do for it. The shaved hair has a little fuzz, so it will be slow growing back. I remember that Banjo was a long time growing back the hair on his neck from the blood tests run on him.

I really love this guy, and I have several friends on the internet that have been praying for him. I think the prayers have done the most good for him. I also think that both spells have followed bringing new ferrets into the home. I will have to be very careful about new ones. There won't be any more new ones until we have some cross the Rainbow Bridge and I sincerely hope and pray that that won't be for years and years. He has made friends with the new ones, enough that I have found them sleeping together. Although I thought that when I picked them up to put up for the night, that Taz looked at them like "What are you doing sleeping with me and how did you get there?" That may be my imagination, but he sure looked at them with a funny look on his face.