We added two new pets. Meet
Ice and

Onion.
Yes they are baby rats. Finney has been learning the ever important lesson...We don't eat family members! He has a high prey drive and he is obviously not to be trusted near them for a while. Finn was way too interested when they first arrived 2 weeks ago, but we have worked on quite a few self control, calming exercises in the presence of the rats, and he has become more directed at food when the rats come out, then the rodents themselves. Got to love classical conditioning. The rats are a precursor to Finney that something good will happen when they appear. In Finn's case this usually happens to be in the form of cheese. Thank you Pavlov! It is very important to train Finn to ignore the rats, as kids are kids and they are quite likely to forget that dogs are dogs. Charlee on the other hand, while a card carrying prey stocker of the canine kind, will not touch them as she truley understands that we don't eat family members. After all in the dog's world, the rats are our resource, not theirs.

I have said for years that I am not rodent ready, but my kids won me over when they printed out all sorts of interesting articles on clicker training rats.

In the not too distant future I hope to be blogging our

rats doing agility on a
course that we made ourselves.

We have already begun basic training and both rats are very smart. Interesting to note that Ice is the calm, outgoing, and social one and Onion is more nervous, shy and timid, and she likes women more than men, which is very much like having two puppy littermates. And just like having littermate pups in the same household, Onion will need lots more handling, socializing, training, and much more one on one time away from her sibling if she is ever to overcome this. Lucky for her, we have lots of rat trainers in this house. Our rat's breeder keeps telling me over and over that they can learn anything dogs can and that some can even be litter trained.
We have already introduced a clicker to them just to get them used to the noise, in conjunction with the kids giving them special treats. And just like pups, they are extremely food motivated. But unlike puppies, rats have a very strong "explore" drive , so it will be a challenge to learn how to redirect that.

For the record it took the kids years to get me rodent ready, and the rats sceeve me out, especially their long rat tails. But I do (kind of) like the rats and the rats really seem to like me. I would like them much better with a docked tail - like little mini rat pugs. Of course it would be cruel to dock a rat's tail- (or any tail!) and I am not advocating that by any means, and I would NEVER do such a thing, but I can dream right?

I can still hear the echo's of , but "come on Mom...please....you can train a rat to do anything a dog can do and you can write about it"....sigh, my kids sure got my number.
File under - what I did for love.