Closed for the Holidays

Every year we close our adoption program in early December until mid January. We strongly believe that pets are not and should NEVER be gifts for someone.

If you want to give someone a ferret as a gift for the Holidays, we suggest you buy them the 3rd edition of the book Ferrets for Dummies by Kim Schilling or a Double Ferret Nation Cage or some other thing the future ferret will need. Gift the prep. Not the pet.

The Holiday Season is full of chaos, travel, visitors, stress, unusual schedules, loud noises and lots of excitement. Ferrets need time to adjust to new surroundings and they need time and attention in order to learn to trust their new humans. The Holiday Season isn’t conducive to the atmosphere required to build this bond. 

Our volunteers need a break too!

All ferrets in the care of our rescue live in a foster home with a family who is (most likely) also going through the stresses of the Holiday Season. Some may need to travel, prepare for Holiday guests, organize and cook family dinners, decorate etc. The time needed to review/approve an application, conduct an interview and perform a home inspection plus arrangements to move a foster ferret to their new home is stressful in itself. Asking them to do all of that on top of their own personal Holidays commitments is not fair to anyone. 

Christmas Decorations are full of ferret hazards. Trees, tinsel, ornaments and other decorations are often pretty but are also choking and blockage hazards for ferrets. Humans are distracted with all of the Holiday commitments and may not be as in tune to what a new ferret is up to as they need to be. Until you know the behaviours of the ferrets in your house, you cannot predict how they will react to the additional things people add to their homes to celebrate.

We can’t do an accurate home inspection if your home is set up for the Holiday Season. We do a home inspection to ensure adoptive homes are safe and prepared for ferrets. We need to see how the home is set up, where the ferrets will have access and what their physical areas are going to contain on a regular basis. 

What if it's an emergency?

We do remain open for urgent or emergency intakes because all ferrets deserve a safe place to stay no matter what time of year it is. New intakes during the Holiday season get placed in a foster home that either doesn’t have plans for the holidays or doesn’t celebrate them at all in order to avoid subjecting the new intakes to additional seasonal stress.