Annette Rand's Blog, page 6
May 15, 2015
Tiptoe
I thought I’d try the photo a day thing again, as it makes me remember to post. This is Tiptoe, who is Russian blue and is two years and five months old. She had her fortnightly tooth trim today, so she’s celebrating being able to eat properly.
March 29, 2015
March 12, 2015
This year’s obsession
It feels like spring today. The weather is warm and humid, with a slight warm breeze. I even passed some may blossom on my walk to work. The cherry trees are showing buds, but the pink or green buds (whichever they are) don’t stand out to my colour-blind eyes. The white may flowers stand out, even though only one of the bushes in the hawthorn hedge had bloomed.
I think this year’s obsession is going to be the rat agility. Last year it was books, but the urge to make more has faded even though I still have more ideas. Now I’m lying awake at night plotting new obstacles to make, rather than plotting new books.
I have a co-conspirator in the rat club, someone who is handy at woodwork so can make agility obstacles for any of our members who want to try it. It’s all a learning process right now, we don’t even have an agreed set of rules yet. What I don’t want is to be the person judging the competition at the shows. I don’t mind leading the training discussion on the club forum, or showing people what I’m learning, but I want to be separate from the judging so I can compete on a level standing.
March 10, 2015
More rat agility
Well, I and the rats are gradually learning how to train for the agility competition. I began by trying to clicker train them, using a tongue click, but that works best one on one because they all expect a treat at each click, and I just can’t do that with 34 rats. I’ve switched to just giving a treat when they get it right. They seem to enjoy it so much it seems a shame to leave anyone out, and it is really good for my relationship with them because it keeps me focused on them while they are out for playtime. So the current method is crowd training with cage each group of 7 or 8 rats. Absolute chaos, but we’re having fun. The main thing they are learning is that mum wants them to do something, and if they can work out what it is they get treats. I don’t think we’re ever going to be world champions like this, but hey.
This video is from a few days ago before I abandoned the click.
February 26, 2015
Rat Agility
My local rat club, the Midlands Rat Club, has had a rat agility course since I first started going to shows in 2001. It’s always been a fun event at the shows, with no-one really training their rats but the rats being willing enough and bright enough to be persuaded around the course on the day. The committee, of which I’m part, have now decided that it would be good to promote the agility event as something that can be trained for in advance, with the thought that it would improve the bond between rat and human and provide an opportunity for enrichment for the rat. Having shown some enthusiasm for the idea I’m now trying to lead the way in learning to train our rats, even though I have no experience at all of training animals. We’re running an online workshop on the club forum, with quite a few people interested in learning to train their rats and make their own practice equipment.
I’ve watched some of the many videos on the topic on Youtube and read a good few pages on training both dogs and small pets, and I’ve decided to try clicker training my rats. I have something of an advantage as I currently have 34 rats, so I can select the ones that appear most interested.
It’s two days since I began trying to train the rats. Some of the advice is to get them used to associating a click with a treat by clicking and then treating. That was mayhem because as soon as they realised I had treats they all started mobbing me for them. There just isn’t time to try out 34 rats separately in an evening, so I decided to try teaching them their first obstacle at the same time. The hoop seemed most sensible, as that is usually the final obstacle.
On Tuesday night little Crystal Tips, who is seven weeks old, very quickly got the idea that click was followed by treat, but didn’t quite get the idea that she needed to jump through the hoop to get the click. Arwen, a seven month old in a different cage group, soon learnt that she needed to jump through the hoop to get the food but didn’t quite get the point of the click.
As of last night, both Crystal Tips and Arwen have now totally got the hang of getting a click as they jump through the hoop and then waiting for a treat. The puffed grains from Rat Rations make a nice reward because there’s very little substance to them but the rats like them. Asha is also learning the jump quickly too, but she was mated up six days ago so I won’t want her jumping around too much soon. She’ll have to wait before we take her too far.
I’m trying to use clicker training, but I’ve never trained an animal before so I need to learn the ropes too. The idea is that the rat gets a click at exactly the moment they do what you want them to, so they know what you are trying to teach them and they know they are about to get a reward. I’m clicking my tongue for now, but I might get a clicker later. It will be interesting to see how different people’s ways of training compare. I suspect the rats will learn however we do it.
It’s quite confusing at the moment because I’m trying to do it while the whole cage group is out, so I’ve got several rats at a time milling about and getting in one another’s way. After Saturday when I introduce the baby boys to their daddy and uncles I will only have five groups to get out every evening rather than six, so I’m planning to use that extra half hour to do one-on-one training with the rats that seem to catch on quickly.
Once I can do one-on-one I will add in the balance beam, I think, and try to teach them to go along the beam and then through the hoop.
February 18, 2015
A bad week for losses
One of the worst parts of keeping rats as pets is their short lifespan. Although I’ve been breeding for over six years with the aim of extending their lives, I’ve only managed to add about one month to their average age.
I’ve lost three rats this week.
On Monday sisters Ruby Slippers and River Mist left me at the age of 31 months. They had been in a group of sisters who always seemed to have one member too ill to be introduced to another cage group, so they remained separate and I let the group slowly leave, one by one, until just the two girls remained. Misty had a very large mammary lump, but was frail even when it began to grow six months ago, so I left it with the thought that I would have her put to sleep when it grew too large for her to manage. Ruby had been slowly losing weight over recent months, and had stopped eating altogether over the weekend. I knew it was time to let them both go, so I walked up to the vets with them in their carry pouch, peeping out and watching me snuggled side by side inside my coat. It’s so hard to see such trust in their eyes when I know they won’t be coming home, but I have no doubt that it was the right time. I walked on to work in the rain afterwards, knowing that I had done the right thing but hating myself nonetheless.
Last night I went to let a cage group out to play and noticed that one of the 22 month old girls, Upsadaisy, was still in the hammock. It wasn’t until I went to wake her that I realised she was having great problems breathing. She had been acting completely normal and healthy just a day beforehand. I’ve seen the same symptoms before, a great effort to draw in each breath, with very little air being taken in and a clicking sound from the lungs. When we’ve had post mortems done we have found incredibly abscessed lungs with hardly any space left for the air. The suspect is Corynebacterium Kutscheri, a horrible infection that tends to become active when they are stressed, so it was possibly down to me trying unsuccessfully to merge their group with another group a couple of months ago. After discussing it with the vet this morning we concluded that it was better for Daisy to let her go. It was such a wrench, so unexpected, and as I walked home to get ready for work the weather didn’t match my mood this time, being a bright and sunny Winter’s day.
The walk to work is so good for me. It helps me sort my head out, smoothing out the wrinkles in my soul and making me ready to go on. I am so very lucky to work close enough to walk in in the mornings.
January 13, 2015
So that’s what it’s called!
I’ve finally worked out what I’m doing with the photo drawing. I’m smudge painting! I’ve been describing it as ‘drawing over the top of photographs’, but now I know it has a name. The fantastic thing is that you can take a really low resolution photo, or a poorly lit photo, edit the colour, contrast and whatever else needs changing and then re-draw it into something that will print at high res and really looks as if it’s professional. Very much fun!
January 12, 2015
A bonus litter
Last summer, when we had the two litters that went to create my book The Rat’s Whiskers, I had planned to mate up Xandy rather than Xara. Then shortly before I did the matings Xandy fell from the top of the cage during free-range. She immediately had a seizure, which I put down to the fall, so I didn’t have a litter from her in case there were any lasting effects.
I’ve been regretting not breeding from her ever since as she’s been completely fit and healthy, so in mid December I mated her to Zachary and five days ago she had a beautiful litter of seven.
I’m really enjoying having a fairly small litter that no-one has any expectations about, as this is the first time I’ve posted about them. I’m planning to keep all of them, so I don’t need to think about homes for them. No-one is expecting regular updates on them and I’m not committed to taking daily photos to make a book about them, so they’re just lovely and stress free. It’s a perfect start to the new year.
January 8, 2015
Reworking NooNoo
I did a drawing before Christmas of a friend’s heart rat, NooNoo, shortly before one of the light-bulb moments of my learning curve with the tablet. Looking back at it, it wasn’t that good at all, so I had another go. So much happier with the new version.
Out with the old
In with the new (Noo?)
January 5, 2015
Whiskers and Tails Digital Pet Portraits
That’s the name of the new website. http://www.whiskersandtails.co.uk/
This may be a very silly thing for me to start. I already have a lot of calls on my time, but at the moment the drawing is an enjoyable thing so it feels like relaxation. I’ve set up the website as an informal place, not too business-like, because I want it to feel like a hobby site and somewhere that is personal, not a faceless place where you put in an order and get a product. If it gets too much then I’ll just have to update it to say I’m not taking commissions for a while.
