# cage dominance with me



## ellismera (Oct 29, 2014)

Hi, recently introduced two rats to a lone rat. They are fine with each other and fine out of the cage. However, my new adoption rat Burty has turned to biting me when I'm in the cage. My other PEW cant see very well and will clasp around my finger to see if its food but doesn't sink teeth in. However Burty a red eyed cream rat is drawing blood every time, and its a pain as I'm covered and it takes over half an hour stop the bleeding. Every time he does it I tap his nose and say 'no'. But I'm not sure this will help. Hes lovely outside of the cage but in the cage he bites. I font think this is a food thing or sight thing as I always announce my presence. Any tips or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Sorry if a topic like this has already been answered. Please redirect me if it has.


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## Ratpax (Aug 24, 2014)

Well, sorry you're getting war wounds, that's no fun.

First, quit hitting him. It's not working for you anyway, right? He's not responding or getting better about not biting, correct?

So stop with the nose tapping.

Lots and lots of small animals (including small birds and large parrots) have been done this way, over the decades, and it really makes many of them worse. I'm not fussing you, as I'm sure someone advised you to do this, and you're just trying to help him understand he can't bite you--but, again, based on results, you can see it's not a good method for him, right?

Are you able to read his body language very well?

As in, does he signal his stress when you get in the cage area? Does he give signs right before he bites you?

If so, you can work with him just under his threshold, with the goal of raising his threshold and desensitizing him.

In plain terms, that means if he looks like he's going to want to bite you from twelve inches away, you go to thirteen or fourteen inches, and offer food, quiet praise, and just time spent with him to allow him to see there's no threat, and calm down.

When he's really comfortable at a certain distance away, you can decrease the distance a small bit, and work there, same steps. And so on, until you are quite close to him and he's still showing you very calm body language. Any time he gets upset again, just calmly go back to the last distance he looked calm, and review the process a bit. Then move forward again.

As far as needing to get him out of the cage or move him to another area of the cage, can you teach him to step inside a small box or carrier? Have something super fun or super yummy in there, each time. That way, he gets a reward for going in, you don't get bitten, everybody wins.


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## ellismera (Oct 29, 2014)

Yes I was advised about the nose tapping. 
He didn't do it until he was introduced to Shiro and Kuro. There I no obvious signs. it is random. Sometimes, he does it and sometimes he doesn't. He's a bit of a monkey, nothing like my other two who are very very timid. They show signs of distress and uneasiness and I react accordingly. Like I said I'm careful around Shiro because he does struggle with his sight. I was just wondering if it was a dominance thing with Burty. I will take on what you said and try that


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## Ratpax (Aug 24, 2014)

ellismera said:


> Yes I was advised about the nose tapping.
> He didn't do it until he was introduced to Shiro and Kuro. There I no obvious signs. it is random. Sometimes, he does it and sometimes he doesn't. He's a bit of a monkey, nothing like my other two who are very very timid. They show signs of distress and uneasiness and I react accordingly. Like I said I'm careful around Shiro because he does struggle with his sight. I was just wondering if it was a dominance thing with Burty. I will take on what you said and try that


Dominance actually means that one animal is competing with another, for food, shelter, or mating resources.

I seriously doubt you're trying to take away his food or warm bed, and I KNOW you're not trying to compete with him for any kind of mating rights, hehe ;D

It's just not really a useful or accurate model for training, and can lead to erroneous thinking and ideas that aren't all that productive or helpful, in our relationships with our four-legged friends.

Try to look for really subtle signs, in his body language.

Is he "freezing"? This is a term that is kind of self-explanatory--the animal tenses up suddenly and ceases all activity, while looking a bit like a coiled spring, ready to burst.

Does he sidle towards your hand? Any hissing or puffing up? (Granted, these two are fairly overt, not subtle, signs.)

Ears tense? Muscles around his jaws tense? Tail held stiffly?

These things can take quite a bit of practice to notice, but I bet they are there--even if it's fleeting and not much time between him "telegraphing" his intentions to bite, and the actual bite. 

Be careful and take it slow, try not to corner him in the cage--always give him a choice between an "escape route" and feeling as though he has to bite you.

The other thing I'd suggest is to speak with a good vet about having him neutered. Tons of folks report really positive changes following a neuter, if any of the cause was hormonal.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I'm not entirely convinced it's dominance related aggression either. That kind of behavior is usually pretty consistent. A cage is a small space where the rat can easily feel cornered and there's little room for you to get a good read on it's behavior because it can't really do much to communicate with you in cramped quarters. 

This is the kind of situation I like to move to the bigger immersion area where you both have room to express yourselves and communicate. Even though your rat has bitten you, I wouldn't assume you are getting into an extreme immersion situation, but bring along thick gloves, oven mitts or a towel just in case things go sideways. There's no sense in getting bitten. Bring some treats and take it slowly, try to get your rat to come to you. Engage him, but don't push for a fight or try to induce a conflict and see how he responds... 

The object of the exercise is to build a bond of trust and love not to instill fear. Once you build a good relationship through play and friendly interaction he should stop biting you in the cage and everywhere else... you are his friend and family and he'll be happy to see you.... that's the plan and the goal.

Immersion follows the simple steps of engage, respond and reply... You engage your rat in a friendly and non threatening way... playfully in an open space... your rat responds to you (and you evaluate that response) then you reply appropriately so the rat can understand you. If he runs away he very might be afraid of you coax him to you and offer treats and gentle skritches, if he is playful work on building a bond through interaction, if he's curious let him explore you etc.

Now sometimes certain rats react very differently... Once they explore the immersion area and they get comfortable with their surroundings and their stress levels drop and their fear of the new place subsides they attack you. This is what dominance behavior looks like. Sometimes it's a learned behavior as in a good offense is a good defense, and sometimes it's social status confusion, but this is where the rarely used extreme immersion technique or even neutering is most applicable... Remember, you aren't going in looking for a fight, you are trying to make a friend... it's the rat that initiates all of the attacking and by assertively defending yourself he gets the message that you aren't his chew toy... Once you work through his aggression issues you continue the session until you work through to bonding and making friends and building trust like with any rat.

It's important to note that if a rat is sick or in pain, blind, seriously visually impaired or even deaf he might bite and none of these issues are easy to diagnose in the cage, so when you get into the immersion space look for signs of these issues too. 

A gentle but firm bop is a good communication technique to tell a bonded and properly socialized rat that you disapprove of some behavior, it really does work a treat, but it's not a substitute for proper socialization and bonding that should come before training. If a rat isn't bonded to you and doesn't see you as a family member, bopping him is only likely to get him more upset and make him more combative as in "my enemy is hitting me" and if it is an aggression issue you definitely don't want to try and fix it in the cage where neither you nor your rat have room to communicate and settle the conflict properly. And when something that should work, doesn't work there isn't much sense in repeating it, it's time to diagnose again and try something else. 

Extreme immersion and it's focus on enforcing proper social order in a mixed rat and human family has gotten a lot of attention because it's fixed so many really screwed up rats. But keep in mind in the grand scheme of things really screwed up rats are pretty uncommon. For the most part dominance or learned biting behavior isn't the issue and normal immersion that's built on bonding and friendly communication is the right approach... correctly diagnosing the problem is essential in correctly treating it. 

Best luck.


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## Ratpax (Aug 24, 2014)

Rat Daddy said:


> ...A gentle but firm bop is a good communication technique to tell a bonded and properly socialized rat that you disapprove of some behavior, it really does work a treat, but it's not a substitute for proper socialization and bonding that should come before training. If a rat isn't bonded to you and doesn't see you as a family member, bopping him is only likely to get him more upset and make him more combative as in "my enemy is hitting me"...


Glad to see you typing that out--that the somewhat gentle sounding euphemism "bop" is indeed and in fact actually *hitting.

*I'm curious, where can I go to look up the empirical data on how "immersion" has "fixed so many really screwed up rats..."?

Sorry, it's the scientist and behaviorist in me--just so reminiscent of all the folks who worship Cesar Millan, claiming he's "fixed" and "saved" so many dogs, but when it's looked at scientifically, accurately, objectively, and in the long term, eh, not so much.

So, if you are actually getting accurate results with rats, I'd love to see the data.

There is plenty of data, in the dog training world, about hitting and "dominance" actually worsening and provoking aggression, and increasing instability in the animal's mental functioning.

Many people erroneously then assume that using motivational/behavioral based methods means permissiveness and "spoiling," or "being a vending machine" to the animal--all are comments that _clearly _demonstrate a complete misunderstanding and ignorance of proper training methods.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I think the confusion here is between training methods and socialization models. Immersion is about socialization and bonding not training. First you socialize and then you train. 

Back in college, the lab rats were intentionally isolated and human contact was discouraged to avoid tainting the results... you basically introduced the stimulus to elicit the response... rinse and repeat. By rewarding certain behaviors you hopefully got the rat to do certain things.... and in fact I'm not taking that away from behavioral trainers... Both rewards and punishments will elicit responses and by adapting the techniques you can get certain behaviors like running mazes, jumping from one side of the cage to the other, etc...

On the other hand you can't engineer someone falling in live with you with candy and flowers. In college, I had a very charming and attractive friend who loved fine dining and Broadway shows and guys who bought her nice things and took her on dates, and she used to love to come over to my apartment afterwards to tell me all about her outrageously expensive dates over home made pancakes and coffee after she spent the night with me... I'll admit I always felt sorry for the guys that she 'victimized'. I honestly got the feeling she enjoyed herself a little too much and I think that eventually put some stress on our relationship. I had another girlfriend that would always go to the bar with her girlfriends an hour before our dates, so they could collect purses full of shot glasses (free drinks) before I and my friends got there, not that I was broke or wouldn't buy drinks, but she hated the idea of not taking advantage of the "freebees". I suppose it was fun for the girls and good for their egos, I found it a little annoying to have to shoo off the bar flies attached to those free drinks, but drinking for free is something you can get used to if you try hard enough, I suppose. Oddly, it broke me of the habit of buying girls I didn't know drinks fast.

I can't defend Cesar Milan's approach, I haven't trained dogs in many years, and don't know who he is or what he is doing. I have however seen beaten up dogs, and I've seen some actually get more aggressive. I've also seen abused children and how screwed up they can get. There is a vast difference between communication and taking account for social status and any kind of animal abuse. If a friend of yours comes to you with an emotional problem, you don't beat him to demonstrate your dominance, you comfort him. On the other hand when your employee walks in 3 hours late, you don't reward him by giving him a bigger bonus when he comes closer to being on time, you dock his pay, write him a warning notice and if he can't respect your position as his employer you let him go. When your child comes home crying because some other kid called him names, you comfort him and you reassure him and you show him love... when he sets the curtains on fire because he didn't like the lunch you sent him to school with... well everyone's parenting methods are different, but most of us would make it clear that that kind of behavior won't ever be tolerated, we don't ween him off arson by teaching him to burn smaller and smaller items of furniture in response to his disappointment over lunch until he just lights a candle when he's angry.

Like everyone else here who loves rats I don't like the idea of punishing them, I don't even like to use the term punishment because it can be so very misunderstood, but when our rats did something dangerous to themselves or otherwise destructive, my daughter would give them a little bop and a little scolding and amazingly the rats immediately changed their behavior... they just go it. To be entirely clear, a little bop from a 5 year old girl isn't anything like a sledge hammer blow from a weight lifter. Moreover the rats were totally bonded to their little girl and I think they really valued leadership coming from her. She was their leader, parent, alpha and when she said 'no' reinforced by a little bop they got the message instantly.... It was communication the rats could and did understand. Lots of people use a little bop to communicate no with their rats and it seem to work a treat for them too.... No bullying or abuse involved, ever.

It strikes me as odd to be defending one tool over another... I have very delicate watch repair tools and I own sledge hammers, torches and air impact tools, it comes down to the job that needs doing, and the control and skill that's required to use the appropriate tool to get the job done. A sledge hammer is a great tool to take down a stockade fence and smash it up so you can bundle it and throw it out, tweeters aren't going to help. When you are fixing a watch, a sledge hammer is always a bad choice of tools. As a quick communication tool that tells your bonded and socialized rat that you are displeased with what it is doing, a bop helps to reinforce 'no'. Whacking a confused and frightened rat with a sledge hammer isn't communicating anything useful and yes, for sure you are making things worse.

Every rat problem isn't about social status. And being a good alpha isn't only about dominance, but sometimes it is. Immersion uses the right tool for the right job... Usually, it's about bonding and building a relationship based on communication, love and trust, but sometimes it's about establishing correct social order. And by the way, watch a few rat intros for yourself... Rats don't approach each other with treats, sometimes they box or fight to establish their status before bonding and becoming best friends... In fact, I don't think I ever did a rat intro that didn't at least involve some mock combat before the rats became best friends, and I've seen a whole lot worse to be honest. And my rats have done way worse to each other than I've ever done to any rat and they all eventually became best friends. Immersion, even at it's most distasteful isn't nearly as bad as what rats do to establish social order and build life time bonds.... Not Even Close!

To be honest... I'm a soft touch... while I was repairing a pair of headphones, Fuzzy Rat snipped off the plug and ran off with it, while I had the wire in one hand and the soldering iron in the other, my rats are spoiled. Max comes to me to pick her up and lift her into her cage instead of climbing in on her own... and all my rats will steal candy right out of my mouth. As to bopping, I bopped Fuzzy Rat so hard, she ignored me for over a minute while I was bopping her as she was tearing up my carpet and she finally got annoyed and sauntered off.. I have never bopped a rat to inflict pain, ever! I believe in corporal punishment, but I've never spanked my daughter and to be honest, I haven't swung a sledge hammer in at least 5 years, even though I own at least 4 of them. But if I need the right tool, I have the right tool and the skills to use it. 

You can't imagine how upsetting it is to be compared to people who abuse their dogs or torture animals or to have a theory based on communication, sound social psychology, and the way rats actually interact, compared to some nut job who tries to beat his dog into submission... Just because the head chef at The Plaza Hotel has a set of sharp knives doesn't make him Jack the ripper. And just because extreme immersion is confrontational doesn't make the folks doing it animal abusers. And a little rat bop is just what it is.. a painless little bop to tell your rat you don't approve of what he's doing and to stop it and usually to reinforce a voice command which some rats have more difficulty understanding.

As to the success of immersion, just skim through the pages here you will find everything you need... there have been more than a few done here while I coached in the archives, some even done in real time so you can follow minute by minute how they were done and how they worked. And that isn't counting the immersions we did before immersion even had a name or the ones I helped with on the immersion thread or by PM... There are even youtube vids of immersions being successfully done. And with over 40,000 reads there hasn't been a single comment about making any rats worse... And with immersion available, Rat Forum has less discussions about neutering than just about every other forum... Read the posts for yourself, people absolutely love their immersed rats... All the data you can ever want is contained in the archives here... People didn't try immersion because someone published a study... I wrote the thread because people asked for it after they saw it work for other people. The first time I introduced the extreme variant of immersion, it fixed a rat that had been biting for months in four hours... the rest is history.

I don't deny that behavior modification can be a useful training tool up to a point, I certainly don't support any kind of animal training theory that's based solely on status and domination... but when I reply to a thread I try to diagnose the nature of the problem and lay out a course for successful treatment... usually I try and recommend that the human sits down on the ground with their rat and plays his or her way into his or her rat's heart.... usually I prefer to encourage folks to try treats and skritches, but after a proper diagnoses, for those problems that require a more confrontational approach to correct social and status problems or learned aggressive behaviors, I'm also not afraid to recommend that someone use the right tools for the job and to give proper instruction of careful and judicious use of them.

We both know that aggressive and biting rats are dangerous and shouldn't be kept as pets. It's a special problem and requires a special treatment... And by the way, I've followed lots of threads where folks tried to fix their seriously troubled rats with behavior modification and PRO approaches and predictably most ended in neutering. In fact, most on line articles on PRO include the instruction that "when this doesn't work, call your vet and schedule a neuter." I'm not even going to ask you for statistical proof that behavior modification or it's PRO morph builds emotional bonds between humans and rats or that it fixes improper social status issues, I don't think it does. In fact, I tend to believe that rats and humans still build bonds despite PRO and clinical behavior modification techniques. And lastly I should ask how it is that you can recommend that a human use behavior modification techniques, without assuming they have a higher status then their rats... in an egalitarian world, humans wouldn't have the moral justification to tell their rats what to do and how to do it... much less train them... Both behavior mod and PRO assume the human is in charge, but unlike Immersion, they don't respect the rats intelligence, competence and emotional well being much less foster bi-directional communication... I've never once seen a PRO advocate talk about respecting their rat or methods of winning a rat's respect. I can't believe this is an oversight.

The readers digest version I promised...

Give it a go, watch immersion work for yourself and let your rat amaze you... I have perfect confidence you won't bully or abuse your rats with any of the techniques I recommend. And just because you find immersion useful, I promise you won't go out and start beating up dogs either...


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## Lita (Jul 10, 2014)

We had a girl who was like this, worse I'd say. She would even run up and bite through the bars when you were opening or closin the door. And it started days after we got her. A coworker asked to take her, but we were going to do some heavy one on one with gloves before that. However we removed her from her cagemates and she relaxed, calmed down, and stopped trying to attack us. My coworker did end up taking her, as her cagemates relaxed as well after she was gone, and she reported that she had no issues with her after she got her home. Well behaved, no attempts at bites at all. So it may have to do with having cage mates? I'm not sure why, defending the others perhaps. He could also just be a wild child and not know boundries or be stubborn. Cricket learned to be gentle after a week of the bop on the nose. She has always been very enthusiastic about things. While Darjeeling loves to chew nails but isn't always careful and bites your fingers sometimes. With her a bop just warrents a look and then she continues as she likes so it's useless. There is no one size fits all anything with pets, especially smart animals like rats. So he could just be being stubborn and resisting the no bop.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Most rats get the message with the first little bop but some rats learn very quickly that you aren't really going to hurt them. For better or worse they trust you. Getting bopped may be annoying but it doesn't hurt so they don't stop what they are doing... As soon as your rats realize that you are only bluffing when you shout and bop they start ignoring you and keep doing what they are doing... Don't overuse either technique because they rapidly becomes ineffective when your rats figure you out. And no, you can't actually hit your rat, as in to inflict actual pain or discomfort. When a gentle bop doesn't work you don't hit harder, you change tactics... There's a clear line between communication and animal abuse. When one communication tool doesn't work, you go back to the toolbox and try another.


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## Ratpax (Aug 24, 2014)

Every single time you interact with an animal, you are teaching.

The animal is learning something in each interaction, good, bad, or indifferent.

Trying to construct artificial differences between "bonding" and "socialization" and "training" is just...muddying the issue we are looking at here.

Seems like some folks think "training" is only for shows or for tricks, or whatever. 

Other than that, as per usual, tl;dr.

I can see it's a losing battle on this forum, and can see why so many have told me privately that the core group long since abandoned the effort.


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## Phile (Oct 29, 2014)

Rat Daddy said:


> A gentle but firm bop is a good communication technique to tell a bonded and properly socialized rat that you disapprove of some behavior, it really does work a treat, but it's not a substitute for proper socialization and bonding that should come before training.


I have had tremendous luck with bops, smacks, and nudges in the context of a close, loving relationship (with no apparent change to the larger dynamic or the rattie's personality). I have used it to train my 3 girls not to walk on my keyboard, and to train 1 of them not to bite me through my shirt. I'm so impressed how quickly two of the three learned not to step on the keys. They'll take shortcuts over a corner of the keyboard, and walk across the wrist protector, but no keys! (The third one is still working on it--she at first thought we were play-fighting, which is her favorite hobby, so she would chase my withdrawing hand back across the keyboard, ha. A louder verbal command at the same time has seemed to help.)

Regarding the original post, it sounds like the relationship might not be developed yet to the point that it would allow proper interpretation of a smack. But I can't tell from the description whether it's an act of aggression or something else.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Phile,

It's funny your brought it up, but the somewhere during the first days we had Amelia, I "scooped" her off the keyboard and told her "no walking on the keyboard" in a firm voice and she never walked on my keyboard again, ever... I've since taught every rat we've owned not to walk on my keys... It really is amazing how fast rats can learn something. And sometimes every good parent has to say no... Rats are happy to learn the rules of their home and they don't get offended when you teach them something. It's all about communication and understanding.

From Ratpax:


> Trying to construct artificial differences between "bonding" and "socialization" and "training" is just...muddying the issue we are looking at here.


Ratpax,

Actually I'm not muddying the issue, bonding is the emotional co-dependent relationship between a rat and his or her human. Socialization is a rat growing confident and competent in his or her bonded social relationships with humans and other rats. You can't train a rat to bond with you, nor can you train another human to fall in love with you. And proper socialization is a complex organic process that takes place naturally through interaction and communication... While you might teach certain social skills, or establish the family structure your rat will grow up in, you don't train socialization. First comes bonding, then socialization then training, in that order.

As to training, I much prefer bi-directional teaching where the human is more of a learning facilitator than a trainer, but yes certain things like not walking on the keyboard does come down to training.

I know behavior modification and operand conditioning doesn't address these issues basic to immersion; in part that's why I left BF Skinner and Company behind. In order to really grasp the many benefits of immersion theory, you have to let go of the basic mental framework of behavior modification and operand conditioning. I know it isn't easy at first, but after I had my own immersion epiphany it really wasn't that hard to do. It's not that everything I ever learned was wrong, it was just that I saw everything in a broader more coherent interrelational framework. It's not that all of your methods are wrong, it's that your philosophy is too small. Once you broaden your horizons, things that shouldn't work suddenly make sense and work a treat... A little bop stops being a punishment and becomes a communication technique. And understanding what you are communicating and how your rat is understanding you is the key to knowing how to use the technique properly and effectively without causing any harm to the rat or the relationship.

You've got to believe somewhere down deep that there's more to humans and rats than stimulus response and fear and pleasure. You must have built real emotional bonds with some of your rats and you have to know in your heart that you are part of your rat's social world as they are part of yours... If so you're half way there.... don't let a an out dated, narrow construct system box in your thinking... open your mind and let your rats truly amaze you.... Let go of stimulus - response, reward and punishment and embrace genuine emotional bonding, socialization, bidirectional communication and mutual understanding and you'll get immersion theory too... It's as easy as that.

I've been where you are, and I understand where you are coming from, I'm not saying you are all wrong, but I promise you there's a lot more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy. Where you see muddy now is exactly where clarity resides. And it's perfectly fine if you can't bring yourself to read my comments now, these threads are archived and they will still be there when you are ready. For now they may be of more use to people that already have open minds and want to better understand immersion theory so they can have better relationships with their own rats. Some day, I sincerely hope you'll understand too.


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## Ratpax (Aug 24, 2014)

<headdesk>


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## ellismera (Oct 29, 2014)

Sorry for the late reply. I've been really busy. Thanks for.all the useful advise it has been really helpful I tried the different things you said (thank you rat daddy) I watched the behaviour and realised it was always the albinos and never my black one. It turns out because I was trying to feed them with treats they were biting me (obviously thinking it was treats). Or it seems that way. I've started placing treats in the bowl and on the floor and biting seems to have stopped all together. Thee is the occasional.pulling of my nails, but that's it. My task now is full socialisation of all three . Thank you again.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

You are most welcome. Rats are fact intelligent little beings and they do things with a reason. Extreme nearsightedness is of course a reason to nip at the wrong things as it is a reason to be fearful of things they can't make out. But because you are also an intelligent being, if you open your mind and try, you can usually decode your rats behavior and find way to communicate and interact that will fix or overcome the problem. And of course getting on the same level to work with your rats with a bit of elbow room creates the best opportunity for communication and understanding going both ways.

It would be nice if we could speak rat or they could speak English or if rats even had a universal language we could somehow learn, but for now, it's build a bond, open a dialogue and patient trial and error... engage your rat, let it reply and respond as best you can until you build a foundation for understanding. Dealing with a rat that has eyesight issues can be challenging. But keep in mind there was once a pink eyed white true shoulder rat represented here and there is currently a deaf one. Being a true shoulder rat is one of the highest levels of competence a rat can achieve. And yet, despite ridiculous odds, certain rats have done it with the patient and determined efforts of their bonded humans.

In light of the progress you have already made, I'm certain you are going to achieve every bit of the wonderful relationship you and your rats deserve.

Great work and best luck.


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## ellismera (Oct 29, 2014)

Thank you, and thank you for your advice. I think sometimes on here it gets confusing as you get so many opinions on how your rat is behaving or what you should do that you get hung up on all of them and I think that's where I failed. I tried to follow s much advice, I forgot to follow instinct and observation.


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