I got Snoopy when he was seven weeks old. I got Snoopy when he was 7 weeks old.
I had to introduce him slowly to my resident rat Pingu whose cagemate Pom suddenly died after a
brief illness. The introductions seemed to go easily, so I decided to put them in the big cage together
three days later.
They seemed to be doing okay together until I started to notice that Pingu was not amused by Snoopy's groomings every now and then and started to get bitey with Snoopy. They were okay for 23 hours and 59 minutes a day but Pingu started to get rougher with him over time, until he got a bad slash wound on his lower tummy in November. I had to take Snoopy to the vet who stitched him up with 2 stitches. After that I had to separate the rats by splitting the cage into two cages (I have a DCN clone cage).
As I felt sorry for the rats being alone and separated I started to ask around in my Facebook ratgroups and I found what you could call a 'rat whisperer,' a woman who specialised in animal behavioralism. With her help I started to reintroduce the rats on neutral ground in a dedicated playcage on my couch. She told me that I introduced the rats too soon and I had to slowly introduce them again under supervision in the playcage.
This was going okay and the rats were starting to be friendlier towards each other. The rat whisperer and I decided that it was the safest option to not have both rats together in the unsplit big cage but separated in the two cages with almost daily supervised playtime on the couch. It was also a good way to get the rats more sociable and to getting to know me better.
Sadly, and totally unexpectedly, his playmate Pingu died on the 25th of December. So now what? Get a new rat and start introductions again and hope that that went well? I had to make decisions.
I decided, with input from the rat whisperer, to not take a second rat. It was a tough decision, because according to the Internet rats should be with other rats. From then on I got Snoopy out of the cage and on the couch in the playcage with the lid open almost daily for up to 4 hours. We usually have dinner together and I give him some scraps from my dinner.
I was getting worried about Snoopy getting a bit bored in the playcage because he slept there for most of the time instead of interacting with me. Though it was a good thing that he felt so comfortable in the play cage that he could fall asleep there.
Since Snoopy was hand-reared from birth and I noticed his willingness to hop on my knee at the maincage when I gave him his daily yogurt treats, I decided to start clicker training him. First he only climbed on my knee for a treat at the maincage, but I wanted to try more. I made a ledge on the playcage and trained him to get on the ledge for a treat. This took us less than two weeks.
The playcage seemed a bit small to me and because Snoopy isn't allow to roam free in my livingroom, I thought about finding a way to let Snoopy get to the couch from the main cage on his own initiative. I bought a 7.5 foot rain gutter for him to connect the main cage to the couch - his own little runway.
Right from day one he understood that it was a nice way for him to get back to the main cage from the couch whenever he felt like it. Since then I have the gutter there for most of the evening and night when I am awake. He likes it very much and comes to watch what I am doing a couple of times a day. I am now training him to come to me through the gutter with the clicker training and it is going very successfully. Here is Snoopy's clicker training video.
Snoopy is now 6 months old and very affectionate and he likes to get treats from me and even from my mouth for a trick. Clicker training is fun!
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