# Good age to start training?



## TagPuppy (Jan 28, 2018)

hey, so Kody is roughly 3 months old now and is very hyper not hugely motivated by food. I've had him for nearly a month and im not sure when the best age to start teaching him basic commands is as he is currently so interested in everything else or in finding somewhere to hide and sleep. 
He's not that hugely motivated by food or treats and so far it is hard to keep him focused. 

I ordered a clicker which will hopefully be useful as he doesn't really respond to sounds. I was wondering if anyone had any advice how long o should wait and let him just be a baby for before starting training more?


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## Shadow <3 (Jan 25, 2017)

You can train rats at any age (provided that they're mobile) but with young rats the trick is to move at a SUPER fast pace. I'm talking switch tricks every 30 seconds, and training 5-10 tricks per session. (Using a wet treat like meat baby food can also help, as it forces the rat to eat next to you instead of running off. And for lure-based tricks like spin, you can initially let them lick as you lure them in a circle, then speed up the circles until they're following the treat and only licking it after they completely spin).

So when I started with training my 5 week old girls (currently 9 months old), I'd perhaps lead them around in two quick circle, switch to training law, work on getting them to pick up an item, switch to training an agaily jump, go back to spin, start training backup, go back to paw, switch to training jump to hand, go back to spin, etc. All in all this training session could go on for around 10 minutes, with me switching tricks every 30 seconds to a minute. 

If you try to drill one trick with a young rat (or any young animal really) you'll usually find that they get bored quickly and wander off. In the past it took me days to train my older girls (all my other rats came home with me at ~3 months old) their first tricks, but I've since realized this is because I insisted on mastering one trick before moving on. So they'd get bored and being young, food wasn't going to stop them from running around when they got bored.


Ever since I switched to the strategy of switching tricks at a rapid pace, I've found that my younger girls can learn incredibly fast. For example, on their second day home my newest girls had learned to spin and give paw on cue, and were learning to pick up their first item. This isn't because they're smarter or more motivated than my other rats, but just because I made sure not to drill anything, switching rapid fire between every trick and thus accomplishing my goal (that they learn to spin and paw) within just a few minutes.


Compare that to the first rat I trained (who is arguably the smartest rat I've had - she learned to do things like stacking rings or fetching money from a purse very easily), who took over a week of many daily sessions to learn her first trick (spin!) I'm completely convinced it was my fault it took so long, after all she was the first animal I tried seriously training and I fell into the trap of not only drilling each trick, but raising my criteria so slowly that she actually got stuck on being lured. Shadow really shined during the second half of her life, when my timing and criteria raising skills had improved and I started training multiple tricks per session.


If switching trick rapid fire is difficult, doing 15-30 second sessions for a single trick is your next best bet. That would be maybe a circle or two before you send that rat back to play. After a few of these session, the rat will most likely catch on and you'll be able to just give your hand cue (rats are terrible at distinguishing words, so hand cues are the way to go when teaching them tricks). This is the way I taught my current older girls their first tricks, and while it took them a little longer to learn than my current youngest, they still had several trick down within just a few days.


Finally, I recommend training easy confidence building tricks first. Things like spin, paw, come, backup, and jump to hand are what I find easiest to train, and once the rat understands how to do these they'll begin to get more actively engaged in training, as they've realized that their own actions are influencing when and if they get a reward.


(Side note: Commercial clickers tend to be too loud for rats. Instead, I recommend something like a popped safety lid from a juice jug or baby food jar. I initially tried out a commercial clicker and found that not only did it scare my rats, but pushing down the button was much more time consuming than with a popped lid. So my timing would be off and the rats would be scared, and it was generally a mess. Eventually I lost the commercial clicker and instead of buying another, I tried using a popped baby food lid. It worked perfectly, and I've been using popped safety lids ever since!)


Good luck, and happy training! [img= class=inlineimg]http://www.ratforum.com/images/smilies/smiley.gif[/img]


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## Clove2440 (Sep 5, 2015)

In my experience, training is best at a younger age. I never taught my oldest, Luna, tricks when she was younger and now she's not interested but I did teach Minnie and Molly when they were maybe 4-5 months old and they were great. Start with things that you can easily teach like leading him with a treat (cheerios, apples, etc) through a hoop. These things are easily teachable in my opinion and they really love learning tricks (and getting treats).


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## athenianratdaddy (Dec 20, 2017)

I don't train my rats in any specific way except the basics, come when called etc. However, I don't think there's an age that's too young to begin training. Rats generally enjoy the interaction with their human(s) and the extra bits of food they get as rewards. Three months is definitely fine.


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## Shadow <3 (Jan 25, 2017)

athenianratdaddy said:


> I don't train my rats in any specific way except the basics, come when called etc. However, I don't think there's an age that's too young to begin training. Rats generally enjoy the interaction with their human(s) and the extra bits of food they get as rewards. Three months is definitely fine.


So true! When I started training my most timid girl at just 5 weeks old, she responded very well! It gave her a fun way to interact with me, without the fear of being touched (we worked on that separately). And even now that she enjoys handling, training is still the activity that excites her the most!


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