Eva's Rat FAQ

AGILITY RATS!

Agility rats? Have you ever heard of them? Those lean, racy and marvellously competitive animals and their dedicated owners who compete in the rattiest competitions ever - based mostly on the rat's own abilities and not their human counterparts need for using the rats as replacements for precious stamps or whatever. If you have not seen any agility rats, what about agility dogs? Those starry eyed, happy bundles of fur that you sometimes can see on TV, or between jumping classes at horse shows. Don't you think that your rats can do the same - then you are WRONG!

My pet rat Ismo is training agility!
In Sweden we have agility competitions not only for dogs, but for rats too since a few years back. And if we are not stopped we might have it for mice, guinea pigs and whatever species that might be kept as pets. A well-established form of showjumping for rabbits is also a very popular thing to watch at many of the bigger pet shows. The rabbits often literally steal the show. I guess every animal lover in this country have heard of showjumping for rabbits, and many of them have seen them too. But still there is only around a thousand dedicated rabbit owner that competes with their rabbits in this interesting form in Sweden. Still fewer persons are competing with their agility/obedience rats, but wait and see - this will change!

Agility for rats is not as well established yet, but these competitions are not only held in the big cities where rats are common pets but also in smaller towns in the countryside. The rat is here to stay as a wonderful and compelling pet, but we firmly believe that the usual rat shows are only a small part of the ratty scene. Rat agility is the new entertainment for both rats and their humans. What is a rat show to a rat? Locked up inside a very small plastic cage a whole boring day with no fun at all! Most rat owners have the same complaints about rat shows - they take all day and are quite boring. But what is a rat agility/obedience competition to a rat? One of the rules for competing with rats in rat competitions arranged by one of the Swedish rat clubs (Tamråttans Vänner) is that all rats entered in the competition shall have a roomy cage with more than just bedding in it. Preferably a hammock and some favourite play things at the least. So housing during the day will be better. Also these competitions still do not take all day so the rat will not have to be away from home all day. But the greatest feature from the rat's point of view must be that the rat will have entertainment during the day - in the competition!

Beside agility competitions there is the obedience competition for rats. It sounds a bit out of the ordinary, doesn't it? So far we have mostly had combined agility/obedience competitions, arranged by two different rattie clubs (Tamråttans Vänner and SRS). Obedience includes coming when called, stand up on command, and such easy tasks.

What I really mean to say is that agility/obedience is not only the founding of a great ratty day together with other rat lovers for both the rat and its humans, but also a great entertainment every day. This is because you have to train, almost every day. And rats love interacting with their humans. Everyday basic training is a great entertainment for curious and easily bored rats. Since rats are the most courageous and agile animals a form of competition where they have to use both brain and body to the fullest seem like a very good idea in order to keep them happy and contented.

The thing with rats is that they are very curious and alert, and thus keeping them locked up in small cages without any activation is NOT a nice way to make them spend their days. They will feel the stress of not having anything to do and start behaving badly. Behaviours such as chewing on the wire, emptying their water bottles, chewing off fur on themselves and so forth are common in these instances. Rats are really prone to develop stereotypical behaviours like these, and others, just like mice and other species which are made for exploring extensive areas and move around for miles each day. They will feel like prisoners in jail - or even worse since you cannot explain to them what crime they have committed to be treated like that. Animals need space to live in and new things to explore.

We can make a comparison between the rat and the guinea pig, just to try to clarify the meaning of this. A guinea pig is a herbivore, and herbivores have to eat a lot to get what they need in form of vitamins, proteins and other nutritional ingredients. Thus the guinea pig spends lots of time searching for food and lots of time eating. As long as you let your guinea pig search for food and eat it, ie spread the food all over its habitat and mostly offer rough food stuffs like hay, the guinea pig will spend a lot of time doing just what it born to do, searching for food and eating. (No hay racks which only will stop the guinea pig from searching for tidbits all over the cage and no pellets that is too concentrated so the guinea pig spends too little time eating.)

But the rat on the other hand is a hunter that will eat anything in the wild. So the rat therefore will spend less time on searching for food and eating, and have much more time left for doing other things, like exploring, playing with other rats, raising rat babies, and such things. Pet rats usually get dinner served in a bowl - which means even less time spent on searching for food and eating and so they will have even more time to do other things. But what other things can a caged rat do? Not much really. And here the problem starts. The rat gets bored.

A big similarity between rats and guinea pigs is that both species are highly social, and thrives in groups. If you keep a herd of guinea pigs in a really big cage, spread out their food over the cage and also see to it that they have lots of food at every time of the day these guinea pigs will probably live a very happy and contented live. They do not need much more than this, as long as their diet is good and their cage gets cleaned regularly. And they all get along nicely with each other. But if you do the same with rats you will soon realize that you have a whole bunch of ratties looking at you for entertainment. Rats need a lot more!

Even if you let your rats live freeroaming in your house/apartment you will notice that they will come to you for entertainment (if they do not get shy and tries to hide from you). Rats are very intelligent and get easily bored, so they need you, their owner, to play with them or train them. You can train them to do circus tricks, or easier tricks, or just play with them. Take them out with you as often as possible. But they will always want more. And here is where the agility/obedience training and competitions come in. Training and competing agility and obedience with your rats will give them all that they need! It will give you something to do and also give your rats a good, healthy life!

Exactly how is this agility/obedience thing done, then? That is a good question. A very good question, indeed. Agility has been around in a few different forms for a couple of years, mostly done in a way that reminds you of agility for dogs. The rat has to go through, over or under an obstacle of some sort. Often the rat has to go through a tunnel, over a fence or balancing on a ladder climbing up on or down to something. The whole course is often situated on a table, so that everyone that so wishes will have a chance to get a clear view of what is happening all the time. Agility always has a maximum time limit in which to complete the course. Usually the time limit is generously calculated so that the owners will want to try again even if it did not go too well.

Agility is not too simple, there are more obstacles than meets the eye at a first glance. Once, in a competition there was a cage that the rat had to go down into through a small "door" on the top of the cage after jumping/climbing up on the outside of the cage, and then the rat had to go out the same way again. The rattie smells inside the cage were supposed to make the rat a bit confused... Some rats stayed in the cage! A tunnel does not have to be straight, so the rat might want to take a nap in the darkest part of it. Some rats just stops and puts his nose to the smells of the other rats that have been on the course before them. Other rats fall to sleep on the course after a busy day greeting all the rat lovers that have gathered!

Obedience classes are more of a trick competition and is even newer than agility but has already proven appreciated. Maybe because it is still easy to train a winner! Usually it consists of a few tricks the rat has to do. At the moment all rats do trick number one, one after the other as the judge calls them to the table, and then they do number two and so on. Three tricks are normal in the obedience competitions of today, and all rats get to try all the tricks. Even those who missed out on the first and second trick are urged to do the third. The tricks might be coming when called, stand up on command and run from point A to point B. All are done with a maximum time limit, quite a generous one too.

Written by: Eva Johansson.

Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 11th of August 2006.