Updated: 5/16/10

 Training your rat can be easy if you know what to do. The first is the water training video. Very informative and it does work. I have had luck myself with training some of my own rats to water. Scroll down to learn how to teach your rat to come when you call it.

This is Taffy, one of our own rats. This is taken just a week after starting the water training with her. As you can see, she took to it pretty easy.

Here are just a few quick tricks you can train your rats to do. It is fun and easy to train them, plus it gives you a chance to see how smart your rats really are. 

Teaching a rat to come when called in 14 days -

It is up to you if you want one rat to come when you call it's name or if you want your whole group to come running to a particular sound. What I am going to explain here is how to work with a group, but you can modify this to work with a single rat and coming when it's name is called.

Day 1, thaw some frozen peas and put them in the cage, walk away. Do this 2-3 times a day. This gets them used to the taste of the peas. You are starting their addiction to them.

Day 2, offer, again, the peas in the cage, walk away.

Day 3, get something that makes noise. You want a soft noise, not something loud and scary. I used yogies in a Gerber Crunchies cardboard can and it worked well. Walk up to the cage quietly and rattle the can (or make the noise you want them to respond to) and open the cage door. This will get their attention and will usually get them coming. When they come to you, give them the pea each, close the door and walk away. You will want to do this at least 5 times a day.

Day 4, make the noise, open the cage, offer the peas.

Day 5, make the noise, open the cage, offer the peas.

Day 6, make the noise, but do NOT open the cage til you have someone or everyone's attention. Then open the door and offer the peas. You want them to come to the noise of the can, not the cage door opening.

Day 7, make the noise, wait, then open that cage, again, all of these steps should be done at least 5 times a day. You can do it more if you want, it should help them to train faster.

Day 8, make the noise, wait, open the cage and offer the treat.

Day 9, Now we are going to move the training to the bathroom. It gives them a larger area to explore and now we can work on actual training sessions, since they associate the sound with the treat. Give them a few minutes to get their energy and exploring out, then rattle the can. Treat whomever comes to you. Let them go off any play and rattle it again. Again, treat who comes to you. The larger the group, the longer this will take. I would say to make 3-5 training sessions a day, 10-20 minutes each time.

Day 10, We are now going to expand it just a bit. Let them get a bit more involved in exploring and call them. Make sure that in each session that everyone comes to you at least 2 times. Rattle the can or make the noise (it has to be the same each time) and treat who comes to you.

Day 11, again, in the bathroom, rattle the can, treat who comes to you. By now we should have almost everyone coming to you when you rattle the can or make the noise. If not, keep doing this daily, 3-5 times a day, 10-20 minutes each time until you have everyone coming to you each time you rattle the can.

Day 12, as long as everyone is coming each and every time, we are going to move to a larger area. THis could be your bedroom or wherever they normally play. Training sessions 10-20 minutes each time, 3-5 times a day. Call them, let them play, call them, let them play. Let a minute or 2 pass between calling, so give them time to get involved in something.

Day 13, continue to call and treat, be consistant. Treat each rat as it comes to you, do not wait for the full group to show up to treat the first one.

Day 14, by the end of this training session, you should be able to call them pretty consistantly. Some may need a little more work than others, just keep at it. If you have to work with those separately, then do so. It will help them in the long run. SOme rats can get distracted by other rats, or get caught up in mob mentality. THey are not coming when called, they are comign when everyone else runs to you. So it is good to test each rat individually as well.

Couple of things to keep in mind:

1. WHile doing this training, do not offer peas for any other reason. They need to trust that ONLY by coming when you call, that they will get the peas.

2. Once trained, you MUST use it at times OTHER than when you plan to put them away. Rats are smart and will associate the end of playtime with the sound and will refuse to come when called. Matter of fact, it could act the opposite that when you call them, they will run from you.