RAVENSWOOD — A Chicago pet shop is bringing the centuries-old sport of “ratting” to Ravenswood with a modern, humane twist.
Urban Pooch, 5400 N. Damen Ave. — which regularly offers grooming, doggie daycare and pet supplies to neighborhood dog owners — is hosting its inaugural ratting workshop on March 16. The two-hour, $75 class will focus on developing a dog’s scent and communication skills by having the pup hunt for rats.
“One of the things that’s different with the scent versions of dog sports, as compared to agility or rally, is that the dog is really in the driver’s seat and exercising their independence,” said Megan E. Renner, founder of City Sniffers Dog Sports Training and its head trainer. “We want to train the dog to have the search drive to go and search for the rat by themselves.”
The two-hour session includes an introduction to the sport before allowing owners and their pets learn to practice ratting on an indoor obstacle course at Urban Pooch.
To participate, dogs need to be at least six months old. No rats will be harmed during the workshop, Renner said.
“The rats are secured in these special PVC tubes,” Renner said. “They’re always enclosed inside the tube, they can’t get out. So they’re safe at all times.”
Joshua Murphy, Urban Pooch’s training consultant, has known Renner for about six years and asked her to bring her ratting skills to his pet shop after being aware of her agility classes offered in Ravenswood, nearby suburbs and downstate.
“For older dogs, or dogs like mine that have a bad leg, this is a very low-impact sport,” Murphy said.
Some dogs that have a hunting or working dog pedigree, such as cocker spaniels or cairn terriers, have a pretty strong natural prey drive. But that doesn’t mean other dog breeds, like a chihuahua, can’t be trained to sniff out rats as they scurry through the maze of PVC tubes, Renner said.
“Dogs that aren’t really prey-driven still learn and greatly enjoy the sport, whether because of the teamwork with their handler or from just playing a fun game,” Renner said. “All types of dogs have the ability to play, even with different kinds of physical limitations or at different ages.”
The History Of Ratting
Chicago has the unsavory distinction of being the country’s rattiest city for the past decade, with modern day exterminators fighting a losing battle against the infamous Norway rat.
In days gone by, dogs trained in ratting were one of the tools exterminators and property owners used to curb the rodent population.
The practice has a long history, with self-described “professional rat-catcher” Ike Matthews writing about the advantages of bringing a trained “ratting” dog to a house call in his 1898 memoir:
“I once called at a farm where they had been threshing a wheat stack. A Rat-catcher had been there but without a dog, and when I arrived two hours afterwards my dog made a set, and commenced scratching amongst the old chaff left at the bottom of the stack, and to the astonishment of myself and the farmer I pulled out of the hole where the dog was scratching 73 live Rats! The other Rat-catcher, who had been at the threshing all day, had caught only 14 Rats. This will serve to show that a Rat-catcher must not be without a good dog.”
The practice was more of a practical matter for Matthews and his contemporaries. But some Victorian London taverns hosted grisly rat-baiting competitions where patrons placed bets on how many rats a dog trained for ratting could kill in an hour, according to the London Museum.
The most famous ratting dog of that era was a black and tan Manchester terrier known as Tiny the Wonder. The dog was owned by Blue Anchor Tavern owner James Shaw and weighed in at about five-and-a-half pounds.
Despite Tiny’s petite stature — he could use a “lady’s bracelet” as a collar — he killed 200 rats in under an hour on two separate occasions: March 28, 1848 and March 27, 1849.
Both times after Tiny’s spree concluded he still had “time to spare,” according to the museum.
No rats are harmed in the modern version of the sport promoted by the Barn Hunt Association, a group that promotes ratting as a sport. Competitions put on by the association have a dedicated “rat wrangler” on site to ensure “all rats are treated humanely” and that the nimble rodents are given time to rest in between matches.
“The rats that we use in the sport are not, you know, the Norwegians,” Renner said. “Within the rat hunt sports community, together we breed the rats that are used to play the sport: They’re called fancy rats.”
Also known as lab rats, the domesticated breed is a divergence from the Norway rat and its history is tied to ratting as a sport. During the 18th and 19th centuries, rat-catchers often sold rodents they captured to members of the rat-baiting community to be used in matches.
Over time, academics began acquiring these fancy rats as well, which led to them being used in scientific studies.
“They’re actually, I think, very cute,” Renner said. “Some people are grossed out by the tails. But even, even if you take the tail out of the photo, they’re much cuter than the alley rat. They even have names. Mine are all named after TV characters.”
Right now, Renner has a few rats named after characters from “The Golden Girls” and “Sex and The City,” she said.
“Part of why we use rats for the sports and not mice or hamsters, for example, is that rats are really highly intelligent,” Renner said. “There are rats that do agility courses, just like dogs do. It’s hilarious. Rats are so stinking smart.”
That intelligence allows the fancy rats Renner uses to put the dogs and their owners at her workshops through their paces as they play an elaborate game of hide and seek, she said.
“Rats are smart enough to learn and realize that they aren’t going to be hurt during the workshops,” Renner said. “But if we put a hamster or something similar in the tubs they’re not as sharp and might die of fright.”
Barn Hunting And Urban Ratting
When Renner describes her workshop to the uninitiated, she tells them that the rodents she uses are “commuter rats” brought to her workshops in travel cages. She later brings them home until the next time they’re called on to compete, she said.
“My rats live with me, and they commute back and forth because my business is split between Springfield, where I have a large building that I rent and play sports in, and then I also train up in Chicago,” she said.
In Springfield, the sport is called barn hunting and involves setting up hay bales as obstacles and as a way to obfuscate the PVC tubes the rats use to navigate the course. For the Ravenswood workshop next month, Renner is setting up an urban version, she said.
Renner spent Tuesday setting up a 75-bale course, with each bale weighing about 40 pounds, she said.
“That’s a chore,” she said. “You got to change the course six times a day. You know, it’s a lot of work.”
For the urban course, items are lighter and the lack of hay means people with allergies don’t have to worry as much, she said.
Renner got into the sport after taking in a 13-year-old cairn terrier rescue named Lucy during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
“We had a couple of good years of playing barn hunt,” Renner said. “But then, when she was about 15, she really couldn’t climb up the bales anymore and that became a barrier to her.”
The urban version is less agility intensive because participating dogs don’t need to climb as much, which makes it great for dogs with physical limitations because of age or injury, she said.
“Lucy played her last run about a year and a half ago, at almost 17,” Renner said. “And was still having the greatest time until we lost her. I think it helped her live longer, to have her brain working all the time doing that.”
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