Ferret Attitude

Question
Hi. My name is Jill Anderson, and my husband Scott and I are having some trouble with our youngest ferret. She is 5 months old, and her name is Polli (polly but with an i). She has a serious attitude problem lol. We have two older ferrets which we've both trained, and both are very well behaved! Their names are Kali (1yr4mnths) and Luci (about 10mnths). They all eat 8-1 Ultimate and live in the 2x2x2 super pet cage. All of our babies are in excellent health.

Let me explain some previous training problems we've had with Polli. When we first got her on Jan. 15th she wasn't making it to the Litter box in the cage most nights. During the day she'd be fine but at night there would always be some of her poop and pee in the platform corners. To deal with this we scruffed her, and said "Potty in the litter box!" into her stomach (Luci is deaf so we use vibrations to let her know when she is being disciplined, Polli gets vibs and tone). We were able to break this bad habit after a week of pro-longed (longer than 10 minutes) of having to scruff her near her accident and placing her into the litter box she stopped having accidents and now makes it every time. This method of punishment has worked very well for our other ferrets and they rarely have accidents and never nip, sometimes dig at the carpet and all that stuff that a no-no.

Our current problem with Polli is her attitude! She has this bad habit of digging in her food bowl and then not eating the food off the floor of the cage...We think she did this because when we got her she was under weight and was one of two females amongst about 6 much older males. When we catch her digging in the bowl we scruff her and say "No dig!" into her stomach and when we let her go (after she becomes submissive, usually takes about a minute) she hisses at either me or my husband. We then scruff her again and bring her to our eye level and Say "No hiss!" and point at her (she doesn't like it) and yet again she hisses. She does this about 4 or 5 times until she is FINALLY submissive with her attitude. She does this with the food bowl, water bowl, when she has accidents, when she digs at the carpet, EVERYTHING! She has some attitude!

I was wondering if you had any alternative suggestions to how we could go about getting the hissing to stop. Is it natural for her to do this? None of our other girls did, then again every ferret is different.

The last person to respond told me to do a bunch of things we already had done - such as making sure our girls had soft cuddly blankets in their cage because they don't poop where they sleep. Well Polli does. And even with shirts and blankets on the cage platforms she went potty on those (trust me the laundry was not fun for me that week! Lol)They have plenty of litter boxes in their play area and lots and lots of toys =)Our girls get lots of positive attention and play time from us (1 hour in the morning with mom and about two hours with my husband and I at night) and we've tried just about everything!

Any suggestions are welcome, and thank you so much in advanced for your time =)

-Jill and Scott Anderson


Answer
Hi Jill & Scott & Polli (nice name!):

First of all, let me commend you on your great method of discipline! It's always nice to have options other than ones folks usually choose (taps on the nose or bottom, etc), which are so wrong for ferrets. I personally hiss, scruff and drag my ferrets to mimic what the mama ferret does when a ferret misbehaves OR say "NO BITE", etc. You may want to try the scruff/drag method and see if it may help. You simply do exactly what you've been doing, scruff her and bring her up to your face, hiss or say "NO BITE" of whatever the problem is, then gently drag the ferret's entire body along on the floor (no slamming, of course) for just a foot or two. It lets them know that YOU are the alpha. That *may* be the signal she's not getting from your gentle (but probably effective for 60% or more of ferrets) method.

The original advice you were given about putting bedding around the litterbox and every place you *don't* want her to go potty is actually valid advice and I would give that same advice. It works 99% of the time; maybe you could try it again and see if it works better now that she's a bit older. Ferrets just plain don't like to eat where they poop or pee - they find it very very upsetting and very very few ferrets will do it; usually only the very very young.

The best news I have for you is that Polli is five months old - and she is considered to be a 'teenager'!! :-)  In just a few more months she will be considered an adult ferret (7 to 9 months old) and you WILL see a big change in not only her feistiness, but her energy level will start to lessen and obedience increase; and even though it seems like you're talking to a wall right now (most teenagers' parents would agree with this!), it WILL change. She very well may exhibit more 'attitude' than your other ferrets for her entire lifetime.  That's not always a bad thing though......

I had one ferret who was SO feisty - she sounds so exactly like your Polli....in fact maybe much worse. When I would point my finger at her, I was lucky if I got my finger back!  My other ferrets have all been so very obedient and sweet, but not Kylie MaWheee!!  She was a stinker and would do things just to get my goat!  She'd climb the screen door all the way to the top just to hear my heart drop and watch my drop everything and run to get her!! Then she'd scamper around on the top of the screen door so I couldn't catch her!! What I realized after a while was that she was doing all these shenanigans to get my attention. She just needed more attention than my boys did so she made her own "games" to get me to be near her more (even BAD attention is better than no attention). I started doing things like taking her in the bathroom at night when I took my bath. I had a little stepstool she could stand on and I would talk to her and sing nursery rhymes while I bathed - sometimes even put her in with me! She absolutely ate this up! Any one-on-one attention seemed to make that bond even stronger and she just blossomed.  I never favored her over the boys - they had their special one-on-one times too - but she just 'shined' when she had hers!  She especially loved to be quietly stolen away and stashed in my mesh purse when I went bye bye (the boys were sleeping anyway) and it made her so 'special'.  I became so very attached to this little girl and all her little quirks.  To the very end, she would NEVER let anyone touch her except her mommy, but she would turn herself inside out for her mommy - it's just who she was...and we all had to accept that. Every ferret really IS different and every now and then we find one that has really different needs. Once those needs are met, you will be shocked at the little Princess she will become. She would even discipline the boys when they would get into things they weren't supposed to do!  She was a mini-mom when I wasn't home or when I wasn't looking!  She would drag them by the forehead away from things they shouldn't get into!!  To make a long story short.......she was my favorite ferret (I KNOW we're not supposed to have favorites, but sometimes you cannot help it; it WAS a very rough start though, I must admit that).  I lost her a year ago in July after a long bout with heart problems; she literally took my heart with her when she left.

The best I can tell you is to keep loving her, keep disciplining her, give her extra love; don't let her get away with anything you wouldn't let the others do.....but when you get a chance, take her with you or make her feel special (not with extra treats, this will only cause obesity - what she wants/needs is time and attention) and you will watch a little Princess emerge from your little troublemaker. If worse comes to worse, send her to me?  ;-)  Just teasing, of course.  But DO appreciate her for what she is...she will love you 100 times more in return.

In loving memory of my ornery 'stinker' Kylie MaWhee,

Jacquie Rodgers