For those of us living in the Antipodes, summer is well and truly among us and especially here, in Western Oz, it’s hot hot hot.

I know many ferret owners know the dangers of ferrets and heatstroke but for some of you newbies out there, please be careful if you have ferrets and they live outside in cages. Make sure their cages are under some kind of shade and if you see your ferret panting, you should freeze a couple of 2L bottles full of water, wrap them in towels and put them in the cage for your ferret to lie against. If you can put a fan outside to blow air on the cage, that’d be helpful too.

A ferret friend sent me a link to an article in Pet Wiki about new advances in dog cancer, pointing me to the paragraph written by Dr Ananya Mandal in June 2010, which said …

“Queensland, Australia scientists have discovered a drug to cure cancer that has effectively worked in animals and is to be tried on humans in the next phase of trials. This drug is plant-derived and is called EBC-46 for trial purposes. The plant from which it is obtained is found in the Australian tropical rainforest. The drug has shown to reduce inoperable tumors in 150 dogs, cats and horses and a ferret to a significant extent. The drug was developed over the past six years from the seed of a rainforest plant found in the Atherton Tablelands. Scientists had cultivated their own plantation of the plant since forming the company QBiotics Limited in 2004.

I was looking at Mojo the other day and realised her tail looked like it was losing hair just at the base. Can you see what I mean here …

Her fur looks just a little bit less at the very top of her tail compared with half in inch below. My heart sank. Having thought Seamus had adrenal problems last year, then finding out that Angus definitely had that disease this year and now Mojo?

I turned her on her back and saw her bald patch …

It’s been a terrible two weeks

Seamus seemed to pick up a bit after his bad teeth were removed but after a few days it started to get harder to get him to eat. I thought that maybe his mouth was hurting him so I made an appointment to see the vet on Tuesday. She checked his mouth and said everything was looking good but just to be on the safe side, I should go back to giving him his antibiotics twice a day.

Well I hang my head in shame

For the past 17 years I haven’t had any problems with my ferrets’ teeth. In fact, my vet has always complimented me on the great condition of all my guys’ teeth so when Seamus stopped eating his kibble, it never occurred to me that he might have problems with his tooth, or teeth even!

I wrote about Seamus’ glaucoma a couple of months ago and for those of you who didn’t read the article, you can see his blind right eye again in this photo …