Trigger Update

@TDrag27: Thanks. It's not so much relating to rats, per se, but pets in general. I hate to see any of them sick, or anyone else's sick. Being at the vet's absolutely depresses me because I see so many ailing animals. It makes me wonder how many other ailing animals are out there who don't have owners willing to get them to the vet. That's probably why I avoid the Animal Planet channel like the plague, especially the 'rescue' shows like Animal Cops. @gigatrix: Sorry to hear about your ferret. :( I've found that a lot of vets are very hit and miss. Some think they can just throw some medication at the problem and it'll be fixed, others take the extra time to actually run the tests. My old vet was in the latter category, but she's since retired. I'm not enthralled with our new vet who specializes in small mammals because he tends to have a chip on his shoulder. I may not have a DVM after my name, but I've had pet rats for going on 7 years now, I'm pretty well versed in rat ailments and physiology; yet I'm treated like I know almost nothing by this new vet. BTW, I'm Buddhist, as well. The decision of euthanizing really doesn't come lightly. But there does come a point, unfortunately, where money is a factor. One of my original pet rats kept suffering from repeat respiratory (mycoplasma pulmonis) infections. We could have kept her alive another couple months by having repeat prednasolone injections, nebulized medication and antibiotics, but it would have cost about 300 every two weeks for an extra two months of life that wouldn't have been what I'd call great. That didn't seem like a responsible option for that situation. @ATC_1982 & gigatrix: Pics, eh? Lets see if I can link to an earlier blog post in comments. If not, I'll just post another blog with the link. I think this was my third or fourth post. The pics aren't that great, a lot of low light problems and some I took with my camera phone: Pics of the current two plus links to my original colony pics.