Already in 1995 me and a friend (Ann-Zophie Pålsson) started our own rat club (Tamråttans Vänner = Friends of Fancy Rats). We believed that the rats themselves should be in focus, not just their colour and type. Rat agility was something we really believed in. Since I often get questions about rat agility I will try to write something about how it is done here. Especially how a small club can start up a series of competitions without too much effort and still get a lot of fun for a lot of rats and their owners.
The most important is to write down simple rules and to make everybody follow the rules. Write down the rules and print them on paper so everyone that comes to compete gets their own copy. Cost of printing to be included in the fee to compete.
Ideas for simple rules:
These simple rules means that you can arrange a rat agility in your home, provide table/tables and fences, paper towels and and printed rules and let the people that want to compete run the competition on their own! (This means that you can compete with your rats too even if you are the one arranging the competition!) We usually included a simple lunch (cost included in the fee for competition).
Have a meeting where people can come and make fences! Fences to be used in competitions need to be easy to clean with water. The reason for this is that rats leave smells (they pee) where they go and other rats read this smells, making a fair competition impossible unless all fences are cleaned between every competing rat. Actually, you might have to have one meeting for building fences and a few for painting them with many layers of water-resistant paint...
How to build fences: Use wood, round pieces, flat pieces, long pieces, and your imagination. You can also look at the photos on these pages and try to copy my fences... Never use nails! Use screws and a drill! And glue! Be sure to not leave anything sticking out that rats can hurt themselves on.
Eva's How To Build Simple Agiliy Fences Page.
Eva's How To Build Difficult Agiliy Fences Page
When you have arranged a row of competitions you may find that a few rats win most of the competitions, they are just too good! When you have a few rats that are too good for the easy class you need to make a harder class with its own rules for these rats! Ideas for harder rules: shorter maximum time, more fences and more difficult fences and a more difficult way to go between the fences! You could also let the owners of these very good agility rats have a lot to say when writing down the new rules for your new class!
One important way to have more difficult classes is to make the way the rat has to go more complicated. If you in a simple class have a round of figure-8-shaped way for the rat to go you can in a higher class have something that looks more like showjumping for horses, where you have to around one fence to take another and so on. This way you have to train the communication between rat and owner, which then is what will decide who wins.
If you do chose to make a more difficult class the way I have described it here, with more difficult fences and a more difficult way the rat is supposed to go between fences, you can use the simple rules above and you still do not really need a judge! There's one simple rule you can change in the real harder class: you can give timefaults when the rat takes the wrong fence.
You will need a bigger table, or two tables with the same height (more or less) to put together to make room for more fences and a more complicated course.
We once had one agility competition where we didn't want to move the table that was used. But in order for everyone to see well, we put the half of the course that was the furthest away higher up. The course started in and ended on the lower part. It was really nice to see, and one thing I noticed was that no rats had any problem with the height difference. Of course we had to use special fences for this course.
I'd like to build a special fence that also uses the climbing ability of the rat in a safe way. I just have not come up with one yet, since I prefer competing with males, and their climbing ability is not as great as that of the females. Many of the fences we are using originated from the dog agility, and from showjumping (with horses), so we have many jumping fences. Maybe we should look at other types of climbing fences - like military obstacle courses - for inspiration.
Also many people think they "know" rats, but do we really? I don't think so personally. I believe there's more to the rat itself than we know already, maybe even abilities we can use to make even more interesting agility competitions and maybe other nice stuff rats can do. I have noticed that I'm not alone thinking this way, but from what I have read so far on this subject people prefer to think about the magic of rats. Like the "magical bond" between rat and owner. I don't believe in magic at all, I believe in science. Therefore I don't believe rats are magic at all, instead I think rats are truly amazing animals as they are.
We used to have obedience class too, which ususally consisted of three tricks the rat was supposed to do. Come when called, stand up on it's hind legs and something else that is fairly easy to teach the rat. All obedience tricks had a maximum time and was judged by how well it was performed. You can include the obedience in agility, and let the rats do their tricks as soon as the last rat has finished it's fences. Or you can have the obedience class as a separate competition. I prefer the later since obedience is interesting enough to stand on its own and not getting mixed up in agility.
Here is one idea for something the rats could compete in that everyone looking at could find very amusing: Wrapping maniacs - or: How to find the hidden treats! The rat that opens the package first or eats it first may be the winner.
When Ann-Zophie and I made our rules we wanted the rules to be easy to understand for anyone that had never ever even seen rat agility before. That is why our rules are so simple. I have learned that other clubs that have agility competitions have other, more complicated rules. One club have rules where you must have a judge that is highly experienced and where the rat and the rat's owner are judged by style and not by time. (The have a generous maximum time.) Often the judge has such a hard time to judge these competitions that they need to let the rats do tricks to decide who won the agility! Here the bystander have no idea of who is the best rat and therefore in this form the agility do not gain members - it loses them. The goal here is that the rat and owner that has the best communication between them will win, but only an experienced judge can see that in this form.
Another way to let the communication between rat and owner decide who wins is to make a complicated way the rat has to move between fences and let the fastest rat win, and if that is the cause you will not lose interest from bystanders - as long as the correct way is neatly drawn and published close to the table for all to see where the rats are competing!
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 17th of February 2007.