What Happened Next

A lot has happened since The Beginning, sneezing? still there but only a few times a day. I'm monitoring it closely. Taming? He's no longer terrified of me touching him, he's actually a pretty good boy at it and getting better everyday. He will let me pet him, which is a BIG improvement, and he likes riding my shoulder (until he gets board and climbs down my shirt lol).

Of course not everything is going smoothly. Trying to find Dapper a rat buddy to live with him has been a bust so far. All the  breeders are pretty far away and rescues only allow you to adopt two at a time (three rats isn't something I can handle right now).

Also, health problems have been getting in the way of this goal as well.  Something  we are combating right now is dandruff. When I first got Dapper he just had a little around his bum area and I wasn't too worried about that, He had a URI to worry about. Last week I noticed him scratching a little bit... this did worry me, and so I looked  closer. There was quite a bit more dandruff now (or what I hope is dandruff and not something slightly more alive).

 Today Dapper let me scratch his back for the first time. He REALLY enjoyed it and just sort of layed limply while I scratched away. I looked down at his back where I was scratching and STARED. There was dandruff everywhere! And I mean everywhere. If salt was yellow and flakey, he would have been a salt shaker. He's a flake shaker. Fun, fun, another mystery to solve, another thing to research. Lets hope I find a safe way to give a rat a bath without me or him having a heart attack.....

A lot of fun and a lot of stressful things have happened over the month and a half I have owned a rat. It's only been a month and a half! Sometimes I have to put that in perspective because I feel bad for the things I don't know or can't do for him right now! Well anyways, more to come soon, hopefully all good, but who knows what craziness lies ahead:)

Wet Dapper after bath. P.S Both Dapper and I survived the bathing. 

The Beginning Part 4- Going to the Pharmacist

Truth; I haven't ever taken in a prescription before. I'm not even a legal adult yet people! So lets just say the poor pharmacist was pretty confused when I gave her the prescription for Dapper's medication.  I sort of just shoved the paper at her and let her figure it out. She asked a few questions, like "is this for some sort of animal?" and then proceeded to make me sign away pretty much all the rights I ever had on the little pen-pad. Then I left until the prescription was filled. 

Thirty minutes later I return. 
"We don't have this medication in stock," the pharmacist informs me in her thick, Latino accent.
"What?? no no, no of course you do!" (I didn't say this out loud obviously, I just sort of stand there instead).
"We can order it and it will be here tomorrow though."
"Ok that would be great," I answer.
"It will be $30 is that OK?"
No no no thank you, Ms. pharmacist. But my vet is cheaper.
(Oh dear what now?)
"Of course we have Trimethoprim with Sulfa added. It is free and should be fine for your animal...."
What? I thought I already had Trimethoprim with Sulfa! I checked my prescription in the car and low and behold it was not Sulfa-Trim like I thought. Not that it was important, but it made me feel pretty dumb that I didn't even know what I was giving my animal. 
I  call the vet, they say the Sulfa-Trim is fine, and so I get a new prescription, pick up the
'Sulfa trim' and proceeded to hope Dapper liked this stuff better- because it was a pain to obtain, even if it was "free".
Then something amazing  happened. I put a little bit of the medication on a plate in Dapper's cage and he LICKED IT UP. Without any baby food, oats or anything. He loved the cherry flavored pink sticky goo all by itself. You know how they say that its the little things that count? Well maybe it's true, because this really made my day, hey it made my WEEK (no wait, my two weeks actually because that's how long he stayed on it).

Dapper getting a little tamer.

The Beginning Part 3- Medicine for a Discount

Two weeks of Sulfa-Trim and Dapper still wasn't better. He was sneezing LESS but not to the point where I felt comfortable letting it be. I was disappointed and totally ballistic, worrying that I would need some SERIOUS drugs to get rid of this RI (or maybe he would never get better). Rescuing him and getting used to caring for him was a lot in and of itself, I felt like I had adopted a child! 

Dealing with people on the internet saying that rats with RI's almost always had Mycoplasma wasn't helping either. Mycoplasma, which nearly all pet rats carry from birth, lacks a cell wall, making it hard to get rid of and impossible to treat with Sulfa-Trim (they say). They concluded an RI then  MUST be treated with a Baytril and Doxycyclin mixture. This was not  helping my stress levels either!!

There was also the fact that it had been really really hard to get him to take his medication. I had to mix the stuff  in baby food first, then cookie dough, yogurt, oatmeal... it was getting to the point I was running out of ideas of what to mix it with! I was SUPER hoping that they would let me get a prescription for the Publix brand. Not just because it was free, but because I had had experience with the medication before and I knew it's consistency was slightly different, maybe he would like it better??? 

Back to the vet we went. The vet seemed to think his progress was going well. She prescribed two more weeks of the same medication. "Can I get this stuff at Publix?" I asked for the second time.  "I think I've gotten it at Publix before for my hamster" the tech (a different, more understanding one than last time) gave me a prescription that I could give to the pharmacist. One step closer to a possibly easier medication experience!

Dapper eating banana out of a spoon.

The Beginning Part 2- This Rat Gets Named

The day after I got This Rat (did I mention that he still wasn't named yet? because he wasn't)  it was evident; he did have a respiratory infection. He was making hacking noises, like coughing or something.

Here I am, a newbie rat owner, with a sick rat. So what do I do? I went to the vet obviously.
On the way to the vet I christened my new pet "Dapper Dandy", because my mom forced me to name him before we got to the vet so "Rat" wouldn't be on the vet forms. It was a good thing too, if I hadn't been forced, I would have not named him for two weeks (I hate decisions).

We get to the vet.  The vet pumped him with fluids as he was dehydrated. He was prescribed   medication for a secondary respiratory infection, a stuff called 'Sulfa Trim'.

"Is Sulfa Trim something I can get at Publix Pharmacy?" I asked the vet tech, a young woman with bobby hair.

I asked because the medication was the same I got for my late hamster Delilah when she needed antibiotics, and it was free at Publix, which was nice.

"Oh I wouldn't know," said the tech, looking perplexed, but uninterested.

"Is there any way to know?" (hoping she would offer to check)

"You are welcome to call them if you want to," she leaves the room while I dial the phone.

The phone call goes rather unexpectedly. Publix couldn't tell me if they had the right medication without the dosage, something I didn't know. Oh well, it would have been nice to save a few dollars, but after that it wasn't worth any more trouble, I could tell I wasn't going to get any further with the tech.

Dapper Dandy after the vet visit.

The Beginning Part 1

Beginnings are either the best or the worst part of a piece of writing.  Lets hope this one is the worse, because most of the time when the beginning is good it just goes downhill from there....

I am starting this blog to keep a record of my rat who I rescued on May 24th 2016. I'm also hoping to add some rats/mice/hamster care sheets on the "care sheet" page, but right now there is nothing on there.

This Rat had a pretty tough start to life.

He was purchased along with one other rattie by a High-School professor for his  psychology class. Their final's experiment was to run the rats in mazes.

Apparently the rats, (who had been forced to run mazes for two days (more than likely without food OR water)) were going to be returned to the pet store, who in turn was planning on using the returned rats as snake food. 

Well the psychology students figured out about the rats' impending doom and decided to try and find homes for them instead. One rat was adopted by a student, and the other (This rat) was posted on Facebook for adoption by someone I knew. 

After talking with the family that posted him on Facebook I went to their house to check him out. I was supposed to check him out health and temperament wise....

At the time I didn't understand why he was just sitting pathetically in the corner of the card-board box they had him in. Knowing his personality better now, I know he was totally freaked. 

 Even though it was evident he probably had an RI infection, I melted and took him home:P  
He was pretty terrified after his long day of mazes and scary cardboard boxes.

Dapper his first day at home.