Little bit of a pain in the neck....

Okay had a little bit of a scare this week.  On this last Friday I was going to give my little girl a bath, get a couple more pictures and put up a post on bathing ferrets.  Well that changed.  I noticed when I picked her up out of her cage that she had this dark spot under her chin along her jaw line.  It was lumpy an looked honestly like a piece of poo.  So I pulled at it and it started to bleed.  Once I got the bleeding under control I took a small look at it and had my roomie look at it too.  She gave it a little squeeze to determine if it was oozing and it wasn't but there definitely was a bit of dimension to what was under the scab.

That little dark spot on her neck was much bigger before I pulled the scab off the first time. 

So on monday I set up a vet appointment and went in on Tuesday with her.  I love her vet.  He is the best.  Basically he took one look at it, pulled the scab back and said that it needed to be taken off and that he could do a smear test to start figuring out what it was.  The surgery was set then for Wednesday... because while local anesthesia is great for humans it is not so good for animals.

So, even though I was slightly panicking, I knew it was necessary.  If it was something more than just a cyst or a viral wart I needed to know.

Now why was I slightly panicking?  The last time I brought one of my ferrets in for surgery I did not get her back alive.  Mind you there were a lot of extenuating circumstances with that one and she actually was opened up but the thought was there. 

So Wednesday I brought Chavi in and she had her little surgery around eleven AM and I called and found out that it wasn't that bad.  It was only subcutaneous and had not spread and that it had no malignant traits to it.  So I made the decision not to send it off to have it analyzed and would instead just make sure that no more 'lumps' would show up and if they did I would deal with it then.

So now I have this...

And in fourteen days I will have them removed.  I just need to keep an eye on them to make sure that they don't get infected.  Pink is okay, oozing it not.

But I will say, she was fairly calm yesterday because of the surgery.  Not as much today though.  Too much cage time in her opinion.

A scary moment....

Now that I am a few days out of this and a bit calmer I can talk about it without having my heart slam so much into my chest. 


It reminds me that you have to always be aware of your ferrets... ALWAYS!!! Always aware of what they are doing, where they are going and what they are getting into.  And what is going on in the world around them.


This incident that about took my little heart out happened on Sunday.  I took my lovely little girl out on her leash and walked her about.  I have found she loves to walk around the building and I love to walk her. Mind you it is not at all like a dog, she does not pull on the leash and walk ahead of me.  I kind of have to lead her. 

But she loves it.

Well she had a couple of areas where whenever she walks through them, nose to the ground, her tail gets all big and bottle brushed, it literally looks like a bottle brush.  But I normally let it go.  Well Sunday I had made it back to the back of the house and was talking to my roommate through the open slider while I let her corgi Jake out, standing on our cement patio.  I was holding my little Chavi up on my shoulder with her looking over the back. 

Suddenly she launched herself off my shoulder flinging herself to the side.  I reached to catch her and managed to part of the way down but she now was panicked and twisted herself back around to continue to fall.  I just barely managed to get a hold of her before she hit the patio.  Pulling her to my chest I found she had wiggled out of the top half of her harness and was panicking still.  I went into the house and tried to get the harness the rest of the way off.  But she was still panicking so I went upstairs and sat in our room a moment letting her calm down as I took it off.  She stayed huddled to me for a little bit before I put her down and she trundled off to find water and food. 

It wouldn't have been as scary for me if I had not been standing on the cement patio.  If she had hit it from my little five foot plus height I would have been going to the animal emergency vet just to have her checked out.

So, always always always be aware of you baby.  You never know what they see or smell that can cause a panicked reaction.

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