Stevie continues to blow me away with her progress. She figures new behaviors out so quickly. It’s extremely fascinating to watch her figure out what the right answer is in real time. Yesterday, I brought the saddle blanket into the training area and left it on the fence. I was only planning on working on targeting and just having it be in the background, but she came up to the blanket and touched it of her own accord. I rewarded her for that, so she kept doing it.

Later, as I was packing things up for the evening, she saw me carrying the blanket and approached to sniff and nose it while it was in my hands. Which is huge!!! She used to be absolutely petrified and would fully tense up or run away at the sight of any tack. There were a few moments where there was subtle tension - big eyes, looking away - but she would actually come back to me and choose to continue interacting with the scary blanket even outside of a training session. 

Egg combining her weave skills with her basketball skills - she did a great job!

Trick tutorial on training rats to play basketball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMf3wUl89nE

Trick tutorial on training rats to weave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bz4EXnFa78

Egg practicing some longer weaves - she’s really gaining confidence with weaves and soon we’ll be using these longer ones in her agility courses!

Trick tutorial on how to train a rat to weave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bz4EXnFa78

Donut working on a fun short agility course - agility courses are her favorite and so we practice various setups quite often!

Trick tutorial on training rats to fetch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsALU4xbzo

Trick tutorial on training a rat agility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Q-vAIpNME

Olive practicing her double barrel roll - I use targets with yogurt smeared on them to encourage her to walk without any luring or targeting!

Trick tutorial on training a rat to walk on a barrel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KVjImgn0-c

Olive practicing the bowling trick - she’s pretty forceful with her pushes, so she often gets strikes!

Trick tutorial on training a rat to bowl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uINkalAPa9I

Omelet is working on scent work - she’s slowly gaining confidence with the new scent work props, and is doing an amazing job!



Trick tutorial on training rats scent work (which this trick is a generalized form of): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7rOc7EOWI

Donut working a fun new agility course with weaves and fetch. This course is particularly special because I’ve never had a rat do weaves at 2 separate points in an agility course - for some reason I thought it would trip Donut up, but she had no issues and found her entry both times! Very proud of this sweet girl and I’m also proud that she then was able to transfer her fetch trick to the course as well!

Trick tutorial on how to train a rat to weave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bz4EXnFa78

Trick tutorial on training rats to fetch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsALU4xbzo

Trick tutorial on training a rat agility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Q-vAIpNME

Olive working a new obstacle combo - we need to revisit walking on the barrel away from me, but she did pretty good for her first attempt at doing that with an item!

Trick tutorial on training a rat to walk on a barrel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KVjImgn0-c

Trick tutorial on training a rat basketball (which is part of the BBQ trick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMf3wUl89nE

Trick tutorial on training a rat agility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Q-vAIpNME

Egg’s turn to learn to fetch the mail - Egg tends to be more wary around new props than her cagemates, so I’m always super proud when she masters a new prop-based trick!

Trick tutorial for the “fetch the mail” trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgpMg56ENJM

Olive’s turn to work fetch while walking backwards on two rolling barrels in a row - and yes she is walking backwards on them, watch her feet closely and you’ll see she has to backup on each barrel in order to move it forwards!

Trick tutorial on training a rat to walk on a barrel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KVjImgn0-c

Trick tutorial on training rats to fetch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsALU4xbzo

Sweet Donut doing some fun scent work with the mini chests - she has to sniff out and tip chest 4!

Trick tutorial on training a rat scent work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7rOc7EOWI

Here was Pickle weaving with a ball from about a month back - present day Pickle is continuing to do well, although her facial abscess (which is on top of the tumor) did open up yesterday. It doesn’t smell bad, which is interesting because it smelled pretty nasty when it first leaked on Thursday - so hopefully that means the AB’s are doing their job. I’m kinda afraid to flush it due to the location, so we will see what my vet says when we meet up Wednesday for another checkup.

I’ll post some update pictures later showing the progression - thankfully Pickle herself seems to be unbothered and has no issue with me poking around the area either.

Trick tutorial on how to train a rat to weave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bz4EXnFa78

Trick tutorial on training rats to fetch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsALU4xbzo

So I’ve stopped training new tricks with Pickle because I don’t want to add any stress to her life right now, however I have some trick clips of her that I have yet to post from before, so I’m going to post those alongside updates.

As far as today’s update, its mainly good news - Pickle has responded really well to the metacam (although she HATES the taste lol), and is back to being 100% active and playful! Very happy to see her act this way, she really seems to be comfortable and doesn’t seem bugged by the tumor.

Another good thing is that Pickles ear infection has cleared up - the ear drops + antibiotics have done an amazing job, and while she’ll continue to be on them, I’m glad to see one issue resolved.

Then unfortunately we have some bad news, which is that the tumor is continuing to grow pretty quickly. In addition to that, it seems that she has an abscess on top of the tumor (common with these types of tumors :/ ), and I can see a scab forming on the lump. Once it opens up, we can flush it and treat it like a usual abscess, but in all likelihood it will never heal back up, because the growing tumor behind it will make that impossible.

Right now I’m just happy that Pickle is comfortable and active, and while I hate seeing this progress I’m glad to know that at least Pickle is continuing to do well and enjoy life <3

Pickle working on some scent work - here she has to find and fetch me the cinnamon scented ball!

Trick tutorial on training a rat scent work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7rOc7EOWI

Trick tutorial for training fetch (the indicator cue Olive is using here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsALU4xbzo

Doing some agility with Omelet and I wanted to try and include her ring toss trick…Omelet did pretty well considering its been a bit since we practiced this, and also considering she’s never done agility while carrying an item (other than flyball)! She’s such a awesome little rat! ❤️

Trick tutorial on training rats ring toss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwTicilZNuE

Trick tutorial on training rats basketball (prerequisite trick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMf3wUl89nE

Trick tutorial on training rats agility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Q-vAIpNME

Apps

So I have been looking at different apps to track both training and health.

I want to log

• Weight - I want to log weight just for fun. It’s good to learn to stand still on a weight scale too.
• Training - I want to keep a journal or at least an overview of training but I want to be able to track different types of training individually. Like nose work / agility / puppy class ect.
• Vet appointments - I want to track different appointments and preferably I want reminders for future appointments. Like an reminder for revaccination and flee/tics treatment and so forth.

I’ve narrowed it down to 3-4 apps because I just can’t seems to find one that have it all.

DogScroll: Made in Finland. Made to track training with multiple dogs. Easy to use. Can track different types of training and there’s a log for how much you have trained in the last month/year. The health tab is very basic and there’s no feature to track weight. Not free.

11 pets: I think it’s made in Spain. It’s easy to personalize. There’s a lot of opportunities to track everything from nails, teeth, bath, weight, different vaccinations and reminders for when you need to schedule next appointments. But there’s really no sufficient way to track training. I don’t know. It seems a little fishy too. I made have sold them my soul and first born. It’s free (but nothing is really free)

Dogo: Okay. This is a guide for training dogs.. and it’s very guided. I was actually pleasantly surprised about how they want you to train your dog (with clicker and positive reinforcement) and the drawings are cute. I actually didn’t download this at first, because I thought it was very ‘Novice handler’. But it’s a good way to remind myself of different tricks and to log them individually. Like sit and down and recall and stuff. You add how well the dog preform the task.

What app are you using?

Am I missing out of something good?

blankbunn:

i wanna be clicker trained like a good obedient pet