What an incredible evening!

Bob Church and two of his friends who are helping him with his DNA collection, Lori Sies and Richard Clark, came over to our house to add our awesome foursome to his database, all thanks to Dianne, the president of WAFFS, who organised it, and what a thrill it was!

Philip and I had “spoken” to Bob on the Ferret Chat Server back in 1997 during the Kodo fiasco, when we were all trying desperately to do whatever we could to stop poor Kodo from being euthanised. We had become quite friendly but had lost touch over the years.

I was really disappointed that I wasn’t able to get over to Melbourne to attend the Symposium and thought I had lost my chance to meet Bob in person because I knew his calendar was full when he was here in Perth. But Dianne was a real sweetie and organised for Bob & co to come over here this evening and it was really lovely to be able to talk about the old times with him.

Lori, who was his right hand man (so to speak), is the lady who was the organiser of the DMK ferret rescue in Ohio last September. 

It was great to sit around chatting but I knew they still had to have dinner, and Lori and Richard were heading back to the States later tonight, so I brought out the gang and the DNA collection commenced!


Seamus, Angus & Muis are getting swabbed by Bob. Shona (from WAFFS) is taking the notes while Lori was helping to weigh all the ferrets, as well as snipping some fur off each ferret’s rump to include with the DNA swab. All very fascinating :-)

The whole process took about 1/2 an hour and Bob even showed me how to brush Muis’ teeth! He checked all the ferrets’ teeth and she was the only one with a little bit of tartar so he said I needed to get a kid’s toothbrush and some baby toothpaste (with no fluoride in it).

I had both sitting in the bathroom for when our granddaughter comes visiting so I got that and gave it to Bob (don’t worry, I won’t be brushing Imogen’s teeth with that brush again ;-) ). Muis is the worst ferret patient I have ever had – she is impossible to scruff as she manages to somehow shrink her skin so that you can’t get a good grip on her neck, and even Bob found it hard to grab her but he won in the end!

So you scruff the ferret and put it so it lies belly up, with its feet tucked under your armpit, and then you place the brush by its mouth and brush!

Muis was not impressed and she flicked the brush away, making the toothpaste fly off and land on the floor, but Bob continued and she calmed down after a bit. Now I know, and I will try to do it myself tomorrow! Should be a laugh, if nothing else ;-)

The time for them all to leave came all too quickly but after hugs and good wishes, leave they did.

We would have never known, let alone met, these lovely American ferret owners had it not been for the Internet so I must tip my hat to Tim Berners-Lee for inventing it :-)

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Filed under: Ferret Research • Ferrets as Pets

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