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| Val Guinn kisses a ferret at PetSmart in Logan
Saturday. The ferrets are up for adoption by The Ferret Cubby
Shelter in Richmond. (Alan Murray/Herald Journal) |
Monday, May 4, 2009
By Devin Felix
The Herald Journal
Shelter helps furry friends find loving homes
through PetSmart adoptions
Nykol Happy’s car has a bumper sticker that reads, “My
ferret is smarter than your honor student.”
About once a month, she drives that car to Logan from her home
in Salt Lake to assist Beth Stanley, who runs the Ferret Cubby
Shelter in Richmond, with ferret adoptions at PetSmart.
On Saturday, she drove through a blinding rainstorm to meet up with Stanley,
a few other volunteers and eight ferrets the group hoped to find homes for.
“I love ferrets. I’m a ferret freak. I’ll drive in snow to
help out here,” said
Happy, whose T-shirt on Saturday read, “I
love ferrets.”
The Ferret Cubby is a shelter that operates similar to cat and dog shelters,
Stanley said. She takes in ferrets who have been abandoned, who have escaped from their homes and been found or ones whose owners could no longer manage
to care for them, she said. When animal control officers pick up a ferret,
they usually place them at Stanley’s shelter, she said.
She does it all for the love of ferrets, she said.
“Ferrets are little comedians,” Stanley said. “You cannot stay
in a bad mood around a ferret that’s playing.”
Many of the ferrets she’s taken in recently have come from people who
have lost their jobs or who have lost their homes and could no longer manage
to care for their ferrets. One ferret came to the shelter from a woman who
was starting a day care in her home and was worried because her ferret had
a tendency to bite. The woman was so grateful to Stanley for taking care
of the ferret that she later put together a fundraiser that brought in about
$130 for the shelter.
Stanley started her ferret shelter about three and a half years ago. She had
friends who ran ferret shelters elsewhere in the state and they pointed out
there were none in Northern Utah, she said. So she decided to change that.
Now she averages housing about 12 ferrets at any given time, though she’s
had as few as eight and as many as 35. Between about 30 and 100 ferrets pass
through the shelter in a year. They are kept in cages and have open play areas,
she said. Each ferret spends about 12 hours a day out of its cage, Stanley
said. That’s more than enough time for a ferret to play, she said,
considering they average about 18 hours of sleep daily.
Stanley brings ferrets to PetSmart about once a month in hopes of connecting
with people who may be interested in adopting them. However, people shouldn’t
expect to take home a ferret the first time they see one, Stanley said. She
requires them to go through a multi-step process before taking one home. They
take a lot of care and attention — more than dogs or cats, she said.
“It’s not something where somebody can walk in and make a snap decision
about a ferret,” she said.
Want to adopt?
For more information on ferrets or adopting ferrets, contact The Ferret Cubby
Shelter at 258-2308 or 755-315-2896, or e-mail
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Visit www.thefer retcubby.petfinder.com to
see photos of the ferrets available for adoption.
|
Ferret News 
