Dean, Our Cuddle Rat

Here's Dean being all cuddly.

You haven't seen a lot of Dean because we've been struggling to treat a skin rash of his.  And, finally success.  After multiple oral antibiotic courses, a skin scraping, etc, we finally used something that worked.

My vet was attributing his rash to an allergy.  I'm thinking he must have had a secondary bacterial infection resistant to the antibiotics he was taking on top of the allergy.  Anyways, what worked you might ask. (I am not implying that my vet didn't think the rash was infected, but rather that she thought the ongoing issue was an allergy.)

Well, the first treatment that showed some improvement was brushing him using a toothbrush saturated in chlorhexidine solution.  But, that particularly solution was going to take daily treatments and we would miss a few days and lose ground against his rash.

When we ran out of the solution the vet gave us, I bought Hibiclens which should have been the same concentration of chlorhexidine (we ran it by the vet), but it was red and the solution our vet gave us was blue.  Anyways, this stuff was potent against his rash.  We only treated him 2 or 3 times.  The red stuff was much more sticky and stayed on his fur for longer than 24 hours.  I'm wondering if the vet watered down the stuff that she gave us.

We are now a few weeks post treatment, and Dean's skin continues to improve.  He has a lot of bald spots, but I expect that time will cure that.

I guess the Hibiclens, which is a topical antiseptic and antimicrobial was able to kill the bacteria that the oral antibiotics weren't able to kill.

He's always liked to cuddle, but rubbing him used to make his scabs bleed.  Yeah, it was bad.  Now, he can cuddle and be petted to his heart's content.

I'm also thrilled that Sam's much milder rash responded well, too because Sam was much more irritable from his skin condition, and now, Sam is happy go lucky with his skin not bothering him.

My fuzzy version of Finger Puppets

Here's my version of finger puppets.  It was originally done by Kathy Marie Smith.  And, this was my attempt to reenact.  As always getting good pictures from my always moving rats is a challenge.

Pumpkin Festivities - Day 2

Report from the Pumpkin Cage-

Well, it's Day 2 of the Pumpkin Festival.

Nighttime is when most of the excavation occurs.




Here we find the starter hole has mostly been ignored.




However, a fairly significant excavation is occurring in the roof of the pumpkin.




So, we have made a minor alteration to the starter hole, and we shall see over the next 24 hours how this affects pumpkin excavation operations.

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Awesome Dean

I just had to share this adorable pic of Dean that my hubby took. By the way, that's Rose he's leaning on.

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Video - Mabel Spinning on Request & Some Health Updates

Mabel can spin on request.  She's so cute.

Check her out.

(Note:  Mabel is a rat with the rex mutation which gives her curly whiskers and fur, but she also has hair loss.  Her fur grows in and then, falls out in patches.)

By the way, I'd been working with her on charging the clicker for several days.  And, unfortunately, she had a lung exacerbation, so she took a break from training for a few days.  So, the first part of the video is from her first session after she returned to training, and the next day, she was just an extremely bright pupil and learned the spin, which is what you see in the second part of the video.


Also, Mabel saw her doctor yesterday.  The doctor was thrilled that she's gained 50 grams since her pneumonia, but she still has lung issues, so she's going to be on theophylline for the rest of her life which reallybums me out.  But, we just will have to deal with it.  At least, she likes the taste of theophylline.

And, on the subject of medicating rats, Dean has just been started on Bactrim for a secondary infection of contact dermatitis.  And, Skip Lee was thrilled to report (Skip is just amazing at medicating rats, so he gets to do all of it  --grins-- )  that Dean avidly reached for the syringe when he clicked, and Dean drank all of his Bactrim quick as can be.  A  couple of weeks ago, I'd done a few clicker training sessions with him.  This is a wonderful consequence of clicker training, easy medication administration.

Now, I need to figure out what Dean is allergic to.  Hopefully, it was a one time issue.  My rats are all on a gluten free diet because of Rose's sensitivity, so it's not wheat.

Does anyone know what the most prevalent rat allergies are other than wheat?