Pouchie-Proofing your house and Free-Roaming

We all know that Pouched Rats need free-roam time.

However it’s important you maintain a safe environment for them. Here is some tips for keeping your house safe and suitable for a freeroaming pouched rat.

Hide as many wires as possible

Although not all pouchies chew wires, it’s certainly not uncommon. If you can, hide wires or considering investing in some plastic trunking to hide the wires

Set out a number of “Pouchie Free” rooms

Pouchies which are given too much freedom can become possessive of their environment. We recommend that you have a couple of rooms with closable doors that they can banned from. This could be the bath room, kitchen and bedroom for example. You can keep anything dangerous in these rooms out of their way.. for example

Hide anything that is toxic

Things such as bottles of bleach, food for other animals, soaps, etc should be hidden away out of reach, this seems obvious but it’s surprising how they find ways ot getting hold of things they shouldn’t

Ensure they cant climb too high.

Although they seem slightly un-wieldly they very capable climbers… just less so good at getting back down. It’s not unheard of to find your pouchie wandering across your curtain rail or on the top of your door. Make sure they cant climb too high and if they are climbing, that they have safe and easy way back down.

Don’t leave anything that you care about in reaching distance.

Pouchies like stealing things, it’s in their nature. Don’t leave anything you would hate to find chewed up in their bed. This includes things such as head phones, remote controls, wallets, important paperwork. Even toothbrush chargers have been known to be stolen.

Keep free-roam consistent

Keeping your times and procedure for out time consistent will make life easier for you and the pouchie. Find a time that works for them and you and stick with it, ensure they go back at the same time as well a good hour or hour and a half is normally ok for free-roam time. Once you keep this routine going, you will find they even take themselves back home.