This rat has learned how to fetch
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00:00 Hey, hey baby, it's playtime.
00:02 My name is Esther Minick-Rosenfeld
00:05 and this is Raisin's story for GeoBeats.
00:08 Very nice.
00:10 I've had over 40 rats in the last 10 years.
00:13 They're pretty much like little pocket dogs.
00:16 You can train them tricks.
00:18 They're super social and affectionate.
00:22 Just as clean as any cat or dog.
00:24 Raisin is my werewolf rat.
00:28 She does know a lot of tricks,
00:29 though some of the tricks that Raisin
00:30 has been working on recently include basketball,
00:33 vet agility, weaving.
00:36 Werewolf is a fur type in rats
00:38 that essentially causes their individual fur follicles
00:41 to molt at different speeds.
00:43 So you will have one part of their fur
00:49 in one stage of the molt and actually be growing in,
00:51 and another in a different stage of the molt
00:53 and not there at all.
00:54 So sometimes she'll have cool patterns on her body
00:57 and they typically will change every few days
01:00 as the fur follicles go through the molt stages.
01:03 When it comes to walking on a barrel,
01:04 she has incredible balance,
01:06 so she pretty much never falls off it.
01:08 And as far as weaves go,
01:11 she pretty much never misses a weave.
01:13 You just look hilarious today.
01:15 What the heck?
01:16 Yeah, that's probably the best temperament
01:18 in any of my rats.
01:19 Raisin is the most bouncy rat you can imagine.
01:22 She bounces from location to location.
01:24 Like she almost never walks.
01:25 It's hilarious.
01:27 (laughing)
01:29 When she's playing with the other rats,
01:30 she's always bouncing.
01:32 She's very energetic.
01:33 She's very sweet.
01:34 She's very outgoing.
01:36 Raisin, don't be mean to the poor tiny bloobs.
01:39 They're just very much the dogs of the rodent world.
01:42 They really love being with you
01:44 and it just makes it really nice having them around.
01:46 Rats are very intelligent animals for many reasons.
01:49 They have a lot of social intelligence in particular
01:53 because they naturally live in large groups
01:54 and they're naturally very social with other rats.
01:56 And that translates really well
01:58 to how you can train with them
02:00 because they naturally are always trying
02:01 to read your body language
02:02 and trying to interact accordingly.
02:04 Sleepy here and there, she.
02:06 Sometimes I'll train them together
02:10 just to kind of build motivation for that trick.
02:12 So in particular with something like fetch,
02:14 which can be difficult for a lot of rats,
02:15 I'll often train it with other rats at first
02:17 that know the trick
02:18 just to kind of show them exactly what I'm looking for
02:21 and motivate them a little more with pure pressure
02:24 because rats definitely feel pure pressure.
02:26 They're a lot like well-behaved toddlers.
02:28 They just really want to make sure
02:30 that they're the one to show me
02:31 that they know what they're doing.
02:33 Raisin is very bonded to me.
02:34 Whenever she sees me out, she always runs to come see me.
02:37 If I'm wearing like a blanket or hoodie,
02:39 she likes to take a nap in there.
02:40 They just are very empathetic animals.
02:44 Rats are unfortunately very short-lived animals,
02:45 so you do lose them pretty often.
02:47 But whenever I go through a situation like that,
02:49 Raisin is always the first one to come up
02:51 and she wants to be with me
02:53 and it just makes me feel a lot better.
02:55 (upbeat music)
02:57 (upbeat music)
03:00 (upbeat music)