Sudden Behaviour change

Question
Hi there,
I have a female rat which is around 1 year and 5 months old. She had a bacterial infection before, and has been consulted vet twice and had injection and antibiotic as treatment. She has finally recovered after the second injection and a week antibiotic course. However, soon after she has recovered. She become very aggressive, especially to food. She hide all the food inside her little house and always ask for more. And once I give her food by hand, she kind of like bite off my finger fastly and run back to her house. Every time I approach her from her back,she bite my hand in a very defensive way. She has bited me badly to bleed twice already.
Her behaviour changed completely, she used to let me handle a lot and even slept with me. I am just wonder know is that something do with the antibiotic? But the medication was stopped 2 weeks already. And I just moved house (a house used to have a dog), but I am still using the same cage for her. I am just wondering isn't the smell of the dog bothering her.Or she doesn't trust me any longer since I force her to take the antibiotic?

Thanks a lot!

Yorn

Answer
Hi Yorn

Your little rat is worried about the dog and her new surroundings. This is why she keeps hiding her food. She has picked up the scent of the dog and feels her food supply is in danger and this is why she is hiding it: from the dog!
I studied rodent behavior and the reason rats stash food is to hide if from other animals. She never did this before but now that she smells a dog, everything has changed. She needs to learn to trust her surroundings and also trust you again.
Its almost a privilege to be trusted by rodents since they usually do not trust humans at all, and in fact, in the wild, this is why we don't see rats out during the day much: they sleep during the day and hunt by night when their enemy, which are humans, are asleep and pose less of a threat to her.
Has she had the chance  to come out of her cage and explore the room her cage is in??  I would set up a barricade, like the one that you can make from Dapper rat, or else a fence, like I use, which is a 4 foot tall fence for small animals, and enclose an area for her to come in and out of her cage into this play pen area and slowly she will see that there is no dog in her home that is a threat to her.
Its not a good idea to use any chemicals around rats such as cleaning products that are unsafe or harsh smelling etc...but you can wipe down the area with a solution of vinegar and water and wipe the baseboards etc....and the rat will be busy smelling the vinegar and water and it will cover up the odor of the dog as well. In fact, I am going up the exotic animal clinic in about 20 minutes and I am going to double check on cleaning chemicals that are rat safe, which like I said, are probably all natural for the most part, so I will add to this during a follow up of what you can use to safely dilute the odor of another animal that has been in the house etc...

Hope this helps!!

Regards

Sandra