"forced socialization" ?

[Petunia]

I've got a foster girl who is very afraid of people. She has cage aggression, I guess, she'll bite you if you try to pick her up when she's in the cage.
But she also acts like she'd bite you if you tried to pick her up when she doesn't want to be picked up-
which sucks, because she never wants to be picked up

she apparently has been lured with food in the past, and then grabbed up, because she is extremely wary of taking food from me. She only just started to do this, and believe me, I am NEVER going to give her food and then pick her up when she takes it. That would just reinforce her fear of that happening, she'd be like, ah ha, I knew it, it was all a trick just to catch me.

so, how the heck DO I pick her up? I can't reach in and pick her up out of a hammock or anything, can't pick her up when she is in a corner.....
but if she's out in the open, she runs away any time I make even the slightest movement in her direction.

I've read a bit about forced socialization, where you hold the rat for a set period of time until they realize that nothing bad is going to happen to them, ok, that sounds like it might work

BUT how do you pick up a rat who does NOT be to held at all?

even if I thought it would work, she is much too fast for me to just scoop up off the floor.

Right now she and her fellow fosters live in a Martin's playpen, I can't get them in and out of the cage they have. They will be transferred to a CN cage when I get it but in the meantime.......

any suggestions on how to get her to trust people- or at least, just me?

 

[mamarat]

Can you make her go into a box or cube then take her out? I have a girl who doesn't like to be picked up but she goes into the ferret boat and I take her out.

 

[jorats]

That's going to be tough for sure. But in time she might learn to trust you and realize that nothing bad will happen to her ever. I have a couple of rats that do not like to be picked up either. But they do go where I tell them to go usually by kind of shoeing them in that direction.
Have you tried the cube idea from mamarat? That might be your only option at this point.
You can force socialize her or just respect her wishes and let her be. I'm sure she's got a good life anyways even though she's missing human interaction.

 

[Petunia]

Can you make her go into a box or cube then take her out? I have a girl who doesn't like to be picked up but she goes into the ferret boat and I take her out.

I wish!! I had a girl like her before, well worse than her, she was an unpredictable biter, really couldn't be handled at all
but she wasn't fearful. I could set a pouch in front of her, or a tube and tell her it was time to come out to play etc and she'd go right in it

but this girl won't do that.

at least, not yet.
I'll keep trying.

where do you get a ferret boat? that sounds intriguing

 

[Petunia]

That's going to be tough for sure. But in time she might learn to trust you and realize that nothing bad will happen to her ever. I have a couple of rats that do not like to be picked up either. But they do go where I tell them to go usually by kind of shoeing them in that direction.
Have you tried the cube idea from mamarat? That might be your only option at this point.
You can force socialize her or just respect her wishes and let her be. I'm sure she's got a good life anyways even though she's missing human interaction.

well she has calmed down a lot and now when I come into the room she'll come out to see what I'm up to, just like her mates Puff and Rita do

Puff and Rita are begging to come out, usually, they are not all that interested in food (which seems so odd to me, as my own girls will fall out of a hammock, literally, FALL out of a hammock, trying to get to food- any kind of food! LOL little oinkers)

I hope that she'll figure out that I'm not so bad after all.

the dilemma I've got right now is that my girls can't free range with the fosters in the room because all they'll do is try to get to the fosters to attack them- Tried to block off the playpen but they've been able to get thru every barrier I've tried and there are no more options.


I can let the fosters free range because they can't, or don't try to, climb up to the CN where my girls are


who would have thought it would be this difficult to just add 3 rats to their home!?!

I don't know how people with large colonies manage!!!

 

[mamarat]

That's good that she does what her cagemates do. She will learn from them.

 

[fenshae]

I sympathize with you there Petunia -- I've never had as many rats as I do right now and the introduction process alone is just about killing me.

My boy Basil doesn't like to be picked up, either. He's super social, he runs up to the cage bars when I come home and will come over to check me out when he's on free-roam time...he just doesn't like to be picked up or touched. He's very aloof. I just sort of respect his decision and handle him very little directly unless for some reason I *have* to grab him.

I say with this girl, if you can get away with not holding her/touching her for awhile (like, if she doesn't have any medical issues to attend to), respect her space-issues as much as is feasible. She might warm up to you at least enough that you can get her in and out of her cage.