15/10/2026
š¾ Mitzi Moomins š¾
Not my usual dog focused content, but felt the need to share something vulnerable. Meet my beautiful ferret Mitzi, the sweetest most gentle gal you could ever hope to meet.
Her whole life has been managed with whole health in mind. Hormonal implant so we donāt need to spay as this can increase risks of adrenal disease. Raw diet with whole pray for species appropriate nutrition. Her kit vaccines and nothing since, no flea or wormer treatment. So a pretty clean slate.
And she still has been diagnosed with terminal lymphoma, likely highly aggressive given how quickly the onset has been. You can never outrun genetics.
We have a wonderful exotics vets, and we discussed quality of life. Without steroids being introduced to reduce the size of her lymph nodes Iām fairly confident she wouldnāt be here now. Weāre very limited pain relief wise, although typically not a āpainfulā cancer there is most certainly an element of pain.
I spoke to so many nurses about how weāre using integrative treatment as part of her palliative care, dosing daily to support pain management and weāve even got baby hair growing back. Daily steroids to reduce lymph swelling, we got our ferret back within 3 days of beginning treatment. On and off with food but using emerade paste to bulk her up, listen if sheās eating something Iāll take it even if the ingredient panel is illusive.
I suppose I wanted to share because sometimes we can be awash with fear of use of pharmaceuticals, but right now theyāre giving us extra time and good quality of life.
Utilising everything in our tool kit to ensure we can keep her comfortable. We discussed chemo, which would require GA with every round⦠and ultimately we decided just because we can do something doesnāt mean we should. It wouldnāt change the outcome, the cancer is everywhere.
For now we enjoy her glimmer moments and let her just be a cheeky ferret. I will write up my integrative protocol for palliative care of a ferret soon as I donāt want the information to disappear when the inevitable happens.
Iām fu***ng heartbroken, itās not fu***ng fair but Iāll do everything I c