My experience in agility training comes mainly from training males, and they are a bit slower than females, so maybe the tips I'm writing here will not be of too much help if you only have females. The photo shows my pet rat Ippe, who gave name to the Ippe-fence.
If you never ever tried it before, I'll give you a picture of how I start with a rat that has never ever trained agility before myself. First I tame the rat to the point where it comes to me several times when it is out of it's cage, just to say hello and give me a kiss or to take a nap in my lap, and the walk away when it wants to, just to back later. The rat has to see you as a safe place/person. Then I usually train the rat to come when I call it.
At the time I started to take up interest in agility for rats I usually let my rats out on my bed, so began the training there. I sit crosslegged on the bed, with a jumping fence in front of me. When any of my rats walks between me and the fence I gently lift up his front paws on to the fence, and encourage it with words to jump. I don't use my hands to make it jump and I don't force the rat. At first it might back away and go somewhere else, then I just try again later.
But you have to be prepared to praise the rat when it goes over the fence, and some rats go over the fence the first time! Praise the rat, and many rats like to be cuddled, but be fast. The rat must get its reward immediately! I used to have all my males out at once, so I had a bunch of rats to reward... Some rats even went over the fence on its own. When my rats got a very good reward it seems like they get a kick out of it, and then the rat just wants more.
The rat is allowed to climb over the fence, jump up on it and down on the other side, or actually jump over the fence, whichever it wants to.
I know that people say that you shall only train one rat the time, but I always had a bunch. I felt like they inspired eachother and wanted to train much more when they were together. But I soon learned to only use one fence at the time because you can only praice one rat at the time...
When all rats, or at least most of them, know how to get over a jumping fence, you can try another fence. But the jumping fence is easier and I usually succeed to train just one rat over more than one first before I try another type of fence.
This kind of training I describe is supposed to give the rat a chance to like agility, and that is the main thing here.
From my rats I have learned that when you train on a fence the rat learns to take the fence a special way. When I start training a rat that never even saw an agility fence before I actually use the Ippe-fence, which is in fact one of the more difficult jumping fences. After a few tries they all go over the Ippe-fence on their own, since they have learned that is the correct way to take that fence. One wrong way is to go through it and another to around it.
When they all go over the Ippe-fence, remember that I generally trained all my males at the same time, I start teaching them that there is a right direction and a wrong direction to take a fence, and that I am the one who decides which is which. This is a very important part of the training, and it builds up the trust between you and your rat. I do this the easy way - when I place the fence with the rats I decide which way is the correct way, and then I only praise the rats when taking it the right way, ignoring any rat going over the fence the wrong way.
In this stage I can still have all the rats out (well, not both males and females at the same time of course), and use just one fence. This stage of the training usually takes a whole lot longer time, and since they sometimes do not get any praise (when they go over the fence the wrong way) it is important to praise them well when they do it right.
Here you can also train the A-fence, the rat has to walk or run all the way over the fence, not jump like in jumping fences.
If they have been training on the A-fence for a while you might want to give them a jumping fence again. Here comes one important bit, turn the fence a bit, and decide which direction is the correct one before they start jumping it. When you have trained for many days or even weeks and changed fences and turned them around you may realize that you really need a way to tell them which way is the correct way to take the fence! How you do that is up to you, an easy way is to point at the fence from the correct side, so the rat can see which way is which (the rat has to be close since rats don't see well). Of course you can read this now and start this training in an earlier phase, but still you will need to be able to teach the rat to take this kind of directions from you in order to really make it in the agility world.
So now you know most of the secrets of rat agility, just start building fences and train all your rats!
I will begin this by telling the story of how I 20 years ago or so learned that rats really like to come when called.
My first rats ever were two agouties, one hooded female and one european berkshire male. I named them both "Råttis", which is Swedish for "Rattie". I spent a lot of time with them and had them running around the apartment a whole lot. I soon realized that they liked to come up to me when I talked to them.
I had grown up with a dog that only knew one trick, and that was to come when called. I had no knowledge of how to train dogs or anything, I just knew that when I had called the dog he came to me and expected to play and get some nice words.
So I tried to use that with my rats, but I didn't know how to play with my rats back then so concentrated on using nice words and cuddles only. It soon turned out that my rats loved to be praised and cuddled! I also knew from the dog that you can't let an animal wait, he needs to praised immediately or he will walk away and then be less likely to come the next time you call him. That made it really easy to teach the rats, just praise the rat and cuddle it immediately when it comes and it will soon be coming back for more.
My first rats also soon taught me one thing I had never thought of: they hated having the same name! So I had to change the name for one of them. I chose to change the name of the female, she got the name Thumpi instead, and after that they were both happy.
And now you know how to teach the rat come when called!
Copyright by Eva Johansson.
Last update: 11th of August 2006.