Rat
Rescue :: Use
this technique and your rat will trust you
Use this technique and your rat will trust you
Is your rattie an adopted rat? Were they either a mistreated
lab rat, or picked up from the Rat Shelter? Is your rat an older
rat who have been traumatized and are terrified of people? Is
your rat an anti-social
rat? Then we'll apply a little Trust Training. With patience and
time - you can teach most any rat to trust you with this training
method.
Trust training is essential for many reasons. With time and
patience, trust training can turn the most anti-social rat into
a loving companion - great news for the rat, because it will
live out its years knowing it's loved - one less animal who
has to be put down before its time!
Trust training can also ensure your safety, since an anti-social
rat can do considerably more damage to you, or even worse small
children. Thankfully, the horror stories are rare - but there
is evidence of rat bites that cause considerable bleeding, and
even permanent damage to fingers or forearms. Why is that?
Most of the time, the rat is older or has been seriously mistreated.
Remember that trust
training takes a lot of time - some people who have used this
method say it's taken them
upwards of four hours per day over a number of weeks and months,
but the rewards can be priceless.
Begin with soft food
Your best assets to begin trust training an anti-social rat
are a spoon, and low-fat yogurt, cottage cheese or even baby
foods (try feeding your rat a few options in their dish first,
to figure out which of the soft foods they love the best).
Reward good behavior
Because you can't yet trust feeding the rat from your fingers,
the spoon and soft food comes in handy to draw your rat out
of the cage and hopefully onto your hand, arm or lap. This can
take days, even weeks, depending on what the rat has gone through
(i.e. a lab rat, or even a young rat that's just scared and
shy). Don't just thrust the spoon at the rat and expect them
to come running.
Talk softly, move with care and be patient. It's often best
to reward bit by bit, and break the trust training into 20-minute
spurts over the day, giving your rat time, space and encouragement
between sessions for maximum effect. Given time, they should
learn to identify you with all the good stuff - and leave their
bad past or poor
behavior behind.
Rats "learn by doing"
Keeping a pair of rats is not only preferred, with trust training
it's practically the only
way to go. Like most other smart animals, rats learn by watching
each other, and a well-socialized rat will help teach its more
skittish cage companion to trust you much more quickly and more
easily than you can.
Author : Diana
Davidson
