Ferret back on pace to live happy life

Known as social and playful animals, ferrets don’t usually spend their waking hours lying around.

When pet owner Carl Hobi of Olathe noticed that one of his ferrets, a 4-year-old named Zelda, was moping around and not eating in December, he figured something might be wrong.

He was right. Hobi said tests showed Zelda had an atrioventricular block in her heart, which was causing an abnormally slow heartbeat.

On Jan. 11, veterinarians at Kansas State University surgically implanted a pacemaker into Zelda, the first such operation performed on a ferret in the school’s history, according to a news release.

After spending a couple of days in the ferret recovery unit at the school’s Veterinary Health Center (fine, it’s actually called an intensive care unit), Zelda was almost as good as new.

“Zelda’s case was a great example of a group of us working together to solve a case that none of us could have tackled on our own,” said Louden Wright, an intern veterinarian at the health center.

The battery in the pacemaker is good for about 10 years, according to the release, which should suit Zelda just fine, because ferrets usually live to around age 7 or 8.

Zelda is scheduled to go back to Kansas State for a checkup next month, but Hobi said she is doing fine now.

“She loves to play with Ping-Pong balls,” Hobi said. “She also loves spending time with her older sisters, Jane and Snickers.”

The pacemaker implantation team at Kansas State included veterinary cardiologist Justin Thomason, clinical associate of small animal surgery Emily Knocke and anesthesiology professor David Rankin.

“I was very concerned about how small our patient was and whether I could suture the pacemaker leads to her heart without causing bleeding,” Knocke said. “This was the first time I had ever performed this particular procedure on a ferret, although I have performed it on dogs before.”

The “leads” are the wires that deliver energy from the pacemaker to the heart muscle, the release said.

With more than 50 veterinarians, the Veterinary Health Center at Kansas State provides routine, specialty and emergency care to animals from around the Midwest, according to the school.

This story was originally published January 31, 2017 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Ferret back on pace to live happy life."