One of my rats, Izzy, was sick several times this fall and winter with some pretty nasty respiratory infections. (You might remember the photo I posted when she met the cat at the vet’s office.) Fortunately, she seems to be all better now.
I’ve had several people ask — how do you give medicine to a rat? This is a cute video of Izzy taking her antibiotic medicine that I took awhile back.
Izzy actually loved to take her medicine. The antibiotics were mixed in a high calorie liquid to also help make sure she was getting enough nutrients. Apparently, the stuff tasted pretty yummy! Once she figured out how good it tasted, she perked up whenever it was time for her meds.
When I offer her the syringe, she grabs on to it, and I slowly push the liquid into her mouth as she licks it off the syringe. At the end, she always wants to keep licking the syringe to make sure that she has gotten every last drop of the medicine. You’ll also see in the video how she bites the syringe to keep me from taking it away from her. Silly rat!
Watch on YouTube: Izzy the rat eats her medicine
I started doing just a bit of clicker training with Izzy this past fall, but we put training on hold while she was ill and then while she was getting her strength back. Now that she’s feeling better, I hope that we’ll have lots of fun training adventures in 2013. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to do to even more training with my four rats this year.
Please visit the rat’s page to learn more about my four rats and why rats make awesome pets!
Wow Izzy is looking really impressive. Why did he go ill? What happened? How is he now?