I'm hoping Pippa will see this and hand out some helpful advice, since I know she has fuzzbutts herself. We will be bringing our new pup home in just under two weeks, at eight weeks of age. We have two female ferrets, both five years old, both very bouncy and playful. The ferrets have their own bedroom (spoilt beggars) with all their toys and beds, and also come out for playtime for a couple of hours a day. For anyone that doesn't know ferrets, they are very adept sleepers and can sleep up to 22 hours a day, but when they're awake, boy do you know it!! So, I'd like some advice on how to first introduce them without the puppy hurting them? The ferrets have very thick skin and play incredibly roughly without hurting each other, but I'm a little nervous that the puppy won't know what's acceptable, so it's up to us to teach him/her that. Do you think that it would be best to let the ferrets out with the puppy in its crate? The issue there being that I won't have a crate-trained pup immediately on bringing it home and don't want to jeopardise that process. Alternatively, I could simply hold the puppy and let the ferrets investigate as they wish? Any advice would be really useful. Thanks!
Re: How to introduce new puppy to our ferrets? Hi Fiona, I don't introduce my puppies to the ferrets until they are older and calmer. The dog needs to be restrained on the first introduction and until you can gauge their reaction is safe. If yours are house ferrets you'll need to proceed just as you would for a cat. The idea is for your other house pets to be just 'background noise' rather than something exciting or a playmate. I suggest frequent but brief interaction at first, lots of supervision with two adults present, one to take care of the ferrets and one to take care of the puppy You'll probably need to restrain the puppy on your lap - it's really important that he doesn't get the idea that these are things to be chased! Let us know how you get on.
Re: How to introduce new puppy to our ferrets? Thanks for the advice, Pippa. Yes, ours are house ferrets, but they are shut away in their bedroom except for their playtime, so it would be easy enough to keep them apart from the puppy for a while, just by keeping the puppy in another room when they're out. We'll definitely do as you say and have both myself and my husband there for the first few meetings and even once they're used to each other, all future interaction will continue to be supervised by at least one of us. We never leave the ferrets out of their room unsupervised, anyway - we'd arrive back to a completely dismantled house if we weren't there to keep them out of too much mischief. The point about making them "background noise" is a good one. I think we'll let the pup settle in for a while, and obviously smelling their scent around the place, before introducing them in a calm way. I'll certainly let you know how it goes!
