My Day at the Ferret Races

I'll admit straight away that I'm not much of a ferret lover. I have lots of friends who adore the little stinky beasts, and I've even seen one or two that could possibly be called cute. But mostly, to me, they look like a cross between a snake, a rat, and a cat. However, ferret lover or no, when I saw that our local PetCo was hosting a day of ferret races, I could not resist the urge to find out what it was all about.

Would it have all the excitement of horse racing, complete with steeplechases and sprints for the finish? Would it be more feral, like dog racing, with greyhounds chasing a bunny? I wasn't sure what to expect from a day at the ferret races, but it was a delightful summer afternoon, so we grabbed a cool drink and pushed our way through the small crowd in the PetCo lobby.

On the floor, we saw what at first looked like plastic lane markers for the ferret races, stretched about ten feet long. Upon closer inspection, however, we saw that they were actually plastic tubes. Trainers for the ferret races were giving their animals practice runs. One trainer would put the ferret in one end of the tube, and the other trainer would call to the ferret to run out the other end.

One of the best things about PetCo is their willingness to work with animal clubs and rescue organizations across the country, and the ferret races were an example of that stellar cooperation. A ferret rescue group set up an adoption center close to the ferret racing lanes, and volunteers picked the fastest animals to run in each heat of the ferret race.

For a gimmicky kind of event, ferret owners took racing quite seriously. The first qualifying heat involved four ferrets, all let loose in their tubes at the same time. Since the tubes were clear, you could see their progress on the inside. One of the ferrets became my personal favorite. He was a lovely sable color and his name was Flash. As soon as he was placed in the tube, all he wanted was to run out the other end. But some of the ferrets wanted to go back the way they came.