My little Ferret Henry has been with my for about a month-ish now. He was 5 months old when I got him. At first, he was very scared of me, and would chomp quite hard on my fingers, toes, ankles, neck, etc, often drawing blood. Eventually, I got him to think of me as his friend, and after we figured out how to block his little room off, hes allowed out in his room at all hours of the day except bed time, and he loves it.

We've been getting a long great lately, but he has always been iffy about being picked up and sometimes doesn't even really like to be pet sometimes. This poses a problem every 2 weeks when I have to trim his nails. He has a weird thing where he HATES being on his back. I'll drop some ferrotone on his belly and he just flips over and tries to get at it from other directions. The first time I clipped his nails it took forever because I had to scruff him over and over. Today, I held him in my arms and he licked his belly until i got finished clipping about 7 nails. i dont know if i did something wrong and hurt him--i dont think so, but then he started freaking out. i tried to put more on his belly and he just wasn't having it.

So, I decided to just grab him from his back, flip him over in a way where he couldn't nip me, and clipped his nails. It worked wonders. I had to grip him harder than I'd like to cause he's squirmy, but it didn't seem to be hurting him at all, so I don't think this was the problem, but near the final nail, he started squirming a lot. I kept trimming and then eventually I saw he was getting wet...I noticed he peed himself. Then I put him down and saw he pooped a little, too. I know he didn't have to poop because he didn't go to his litter box afterwards, so I realized he must have done it out of fear.

I kept thinking today what kind of fear I'd have to be in to lose control of my bowels, and I couldn't even imagine it. I know he's not a human, he's an animal, and they can't rationalize, but I really can't explain how bad I feel. I'm sure he would have been fine had i let him go and continued it later when he calmed down. I just can't get over this, I can't believe I scared him so much. I feel so horrible. He was scared of me for about 30 minutes and then went back to normal and even was quite nice and cuddly, but I still can't get it out of my head. 

I don't know what I'm expecting as a response, but I'm just hoping someone has some input on how he felt and how to prevent it in the future. Thanks.