I need to take a moment to address some of the questions that have been asked recently.

Dazzle Me Rattery is not going anywhere.  We are considerably jaded, and perhaps a bit cynical over the experiences we’ve had over the last year, and some of the issues we’ve encountered in our line for years. Sometimes you have to take a step back and remember what is truly important in what you do and refresh yourself and your program in the interim.  Additionally, more recently and more importantly, I’m working long hours at my real job and have dedicated myself to my fitness goals. Outside of this, much of my time is spent caring for the critters – most of which are now geriatric. As much as I would absolutely love to be doting on a litter of dumbo bubs (I miss them!), I do not currently have the time it would take to do it all properly. We still need to run bloodwork.  We will no longer be breeding for Russian Cinnamon, Fawn and Siamese. We will be working toward breeding and standardizing Honey Cinnamon, and going back to our roots with marked American Blues/Russian Silvers.  The website will reflect all of these changes as time and desire simultaneously permits. We do not expect to have any pups available for a few months at best.

Patience is a virtue!

Thanks for reading.  As always, any and all inquiries are welcome.

-Melina

Our rattery is in a state of change. The plans we set up at the beginning of the year have been largely unsuccessful. We’re running blood work to rule out a viral illness but the outcome will merely provide us with some possible answers. We’ve decided to run a 3 month quarantine period regardless of what the results point out. This quarantine will last from July 1st – October 1st. We will not have any litters or bring in any new rats during this period.  Any new rats that are acquired will be held in a separate location until our quarantine is over.

During this time we will be revamping our plans and goals and clearing our waiting list.  We suggest you look into the Huron Valley Rat Rescue or other area breeders to fulfill your requests.  Moving forward we will only be breeding for ourselves, friend and family. We may occasionally release babies to the general public but do not expect this to be frequent.  The website will be updated as time and desire allows.

Have a great Summer!

I think that if you are going to have an Oops litter on purpose, then you should own up and keep every single one. If you want to experience the “joys” of babyhood there are ways to go about this — fostering a pregnant rat for example. But if you’re going to ignore all of the facts, all of the education that is provided, and still go forth and “accidentally” breed your rats — keep them all. You want the experience. Keep them all through the ENTIRE experience of wrongful breeding. Keep them through their babyhood, their oh so cute and irresistible age. Then keep them on through their teenage months. Through their adolescent months. Up and over their first year. Into their senior months and when they’ve gone fully geriatric on you and start coming up with tumors, eye issues, hind end paralysis, constant respiratory infections, heart disease, kidney failure among many other things — then you tell us how great it is to have purposely bred your rats. Tell us then that an emergency spay would have been too costly, after shelling out $700 on a 14mo rat with heart disease just in time to need to remove multiple tumors on another sibling.

If all you do is experience the good, the fun part of raising babies, and not gain the FULL experience of YOUR actions, then you will likely do it again. If you want to raise babies that bad, then raise them. But don’t shuffle them off. Keep them to see what the FULL outcome of your mistake will be. And then look those poor rats in the eye when they come up with cancers, tumors, heart disease, and tell them you’d GLADLY make the same mistakes again.

If you’ll notice in my contracts I’ve put in a stipulation that states:
“DAZL also reserves the right to temporarily reclaim this rat at any point in the future for breeding purposes if this should become necessary in improving our lines.”

This is a stipulation on every contract for every rat that leaves here because you never know when such a situation may arise. In the six years of breeding I have never had to reclaim one of my rats, pet or breeder, from their adoptive homes. The option is always there if something were to happen and I desperately needed to borrow the rat back for breeding. If such a situation arose I would first look to my breeder friends if I placed rats with them that are of the same relation as what I am needing. They would let me borrow back the rat to get a litter from them and I would return the rat once a litter has been born (if male) or weaned (if female). If my breeder friends did not have any of the relatives I am looking for then I will have to move on to my pet adopters. This would be a last chance scenario for two reasons — they were placed as pet only for a reason (usually slight cosmetic faults), and this means uprooting a rat from their family to be a breeder for a few weeks, possibly even raise a litter, and then be returned to their home. Using females brings far more risk than using a male, so that would also be taken into consideration. None of these decisions would be made lightly, and we would never come to a pet adopter unless it was absolutely, positively necessary in saving a part of our line that we can’t otherwise salvage on our own.

A situation came up recently where one of my breeder friends had to ask me for a rat back that she had just placed with me. A possible new gene affecting color was discovered and if that proves to be true then parts of her line would then be affected by this color modifier which goes against everything that particular line stands for. She would need to jump back to rats that are not so closely related to the line throwing the color modifier but none that she kept were suitable. The Agouti Dumbo boy I adopted, BVR Jolt, would need to be reclaimed to achieve the results that would be necessary in salvaging the purity of the line. This situation did not sit well with me. I had already fallen in love with him, of course. But I had adopted Jolt because he hails from BVR Fearn’s Pippin, a beautiful, dark and sturdy Agouti Satin. A dark son of Pippin would help me with step two of building my Agouti line. We tried to think of different options but in the end BVR Jolt is being returned to the BVR to “do his thang” in helping to save the line.  He’ll be used later this year with a beautiful Russian Blue girl, BVR Black-Eyed Susan. We have been promised a baby to replace Jolt and are anxiously and excitedly awaiting this pairing!  Giving up Jolt will mean that using his genes (offspring) in our Agouti program will be delayed by up to a year. But of course, his first duty of saving the line at the BVR is far more important and we hope he performs well!

BVR Jolt @ 3 months

Another new year has begun and as usual we are being kept pretty busy around here. Here are a few updates from the last few months.

Litters Born – Litters Lost

The DAZL Carry On Amadeus x BVR Sea of Tranquility litter went off without a hitch. Tranq was a very good mother, even allowing me to video record the birth of her litter. Her litter consisted of 8 pups – 4 males and 4 females. Almost all of them were Russian Blue Agouti aside from one Russian Blue female.  Our keepers are:

• DAZL Fire on the Mountain – Russian Blue Agouti Self Dumbo
  This boy has his mother’s big beautiful eyes and sweet disposition.

• DAZL Give Me the Meltdown – Russian Blue Agouti Self Dumbo
  Meltdown is very similar to Mountain, but with smaller eyes and a more whispy coat.

• DAZL Her Diamonds – Russian Blue Agouti English Irish Rex Dumbo
  This dollbaby is as rambunctious as she is cute.

• DAZL Wonderful – Russian Blue American Irish Rex
  A beautiful petite little girl with good substance, lovely head and dark/deep Russian Blue coloration.

We are excited to see the next generation of this outcross line — we’ll discuss more of this later!

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Several situations made me re-evaluate my decision about the Siamese line. I had previously given up the idea of doing a sibling breeding out of the January 2009 Siamese line litter but began to rethink this plan. I quickly decided to go through with a breeding I had been wanting to do between DAZL Elijah (American Blue Siamese) and DAZL Gwendolen (Black Self Rex). This litter occurred January 21, 2010. Gwen has been a stellar mother and has done something I’ve never seen before — she played with her pups. She would run after them, tackle them, powergroom, and really thought she was a pup just like them. It was so adorable to see.

This litter was a surprise of sorts for me. I had anticipated/wanted American Blue to come through for a separate side project. I expected there to be a large litter so therefore also anticipated extra chances at having AB and possibly Russian Silver to pop through in non-colorpoint form. Gwen gave me a surprise when she birthed a tiny litter of five pups – 3 males and 2 females, four of which were Siamese! I was just slightly disappointed in the number of Siamese pups because my last litter was not exactly great as far as points and shading go. I had really wanted some solid rats with the fun personality Elijah had to offer. Well Mendel decided to throw me NICE surprises this time. All the Siamese pups developed fantastic shading — both on the Seal points and on the Russian Blue points. Yes… I finally got my Russian Blue pt Siamese!! I have not had any RBpts born here since 2004. The one little Black girl was also fantastic — dark and nice conformation. The whole litter was a very fun experience. They grew up big and strong and looked for fun everywhere they turned. You should know where I’m going with this. Yep, these are our keepers:

• DAZL Qannik – Seal Pt Siamese Rex buck
  Very nice angular head and stout body.

• DAZL Anyu – Seal Pt Siamese Rex buck
  Similar to Qannik, but with a less angular head.

• DAZL Kayi “Kai” – Russian Blue Pt Siamese Rex buck
  Adorable smokey blue points on this boy and a tail that wags

• DAZL  Gweneira – Black Self Rex doe
  Very similar to her mother and grandmother, a definite keeper from the start

• DAZL Neva – Russian Blue Pt Siamese doe
  The only standard coat of the litter, and a very chunky girl at that.

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Our planned litter between two of our favorite rats – DAZL Art Nouveau x DAZL Harmony — was a disappointment, to say the least. Harmony had a longer labor and delivered stillborn pups. She is doing well.

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We have had a litter born between DAZL Fire Festival and a returning female, DAZL Asymmetry. Fire Festival is getting up there (currently at 21 months old) and we did not want to miss out on the opportunity of having pups with his excellent temperament. He is a floppy pancake kinda boy. Asymmetry turned out the better choice against Gold Leaf and so the pairing was made and Asy had a very easy and fast delivery on March 13th. She had 10 pups – 6 boys and 4 girls. The colors have yet to be determined as they have developed totally against the criteria we’re used to. We’re just thoroughly excited that the DAZL line has moved forward another generation and that Asy had no problems at all with the whole thing!

The loss of Harmony’s litter is a definite setback for our main line because it just reaffirms that the issues present in them in regards to fertility and birthing problems have not gone anywhere. We have rats living to 30 months of age without health issues but we cannot guarantee they can reproduce properly. I can’t give up the longer living rats without having to deal with occasional birthing issues, unfortunately. I have sat down and made up charts trying to predict the likelihood of each litter having this issue but it is a crapshoot at best.  At this point in time there is no pattern. You have Harmony, whose mother and grandmother had litters (3 between them) without issue. Then you have Harmony who birthed stillborns, and her sister Asymmetry had a perfectly smooth and easy delivery just two weeks later.

We have decided that from our main line we will not place females on breeding contract, as has been the case for the last few litters anyway. We will be moving forward with our Outcross line from healthy BVR and BVR-descendant females. We will also be bringing in a partial outcross female from Odyssey Design Rattery’s pairing of DAZL Bleep Urchin x ODD Okonomiyaki in the Summer. We will continue to work with our main line but we will not take names for waiting lists until pups have been born and are doing well. This includes our Russian Cinnamon and Fawn lines.  Planned pairings may not be listed on the Litter Page, however the outcome of those pairings will always be listed openly on our Current Litters page if successful, or our Past Litters page if unsuccessful. We just do not feel we should build up people’s expectations towards a litter and then disappoint when it does not come to pass.

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New Additions

In February we made a trip to Ohio to pick up our Harlan products as well as to pick up our new additions. We’re pretty well set for Lab blocks until late Summer, and rats for that matter! LOL After a month-long quarantine we welcomed the following rats into the rattery:

• BVR Hope Diamond – Russian Blue Siamese Satin-Rex doe
  Diamond will hopefully help us along with our Siamese program later this year. She’s a petite little girl with endless energy!

• BVR Whizzo – Russian Cinnamon Berkshire Rex doe
  Whizzo is an adorable girl out of BVR’s first outcross litter between DAZL Gadzooks x BVR Lacus Temporis.

• BVR Tiffany – Russian Silver Siamese Satin-Rex doe
  We’re holding onto Tiffany until the Spring Show for Tiffany @ So Licky Rattery.

• BVR Ram’s Bladder Cup – Agouti Berkshire buck
  Ram is a brother to Whizzo out of the same outcross litter. He is a rich, gorgeous agouti buck with great markings.

• BVR Ahmadabad – Russian Silver Siamese Satin buck
  We’re holding onto Ahmadabad until the Spring Show for Tiffany @ So Licky Rattery.

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New Plans

These are our litter plans for the remainder of the year. Our main line litters are not included in this listing except for the Skidaddle x Imma Be litter in June.

Fawn Line

DAZL Skidaddle (Fawn Dumbo) x DAZL Imma Be (R. Fawn Hooded Dumbo) – June 2010

DAZL Fresco (Russian Fawn Variegated Rex Dumbo) x DAZL Her Diamonds (Russian Blue Agouti Irish Rex Dumbo) – June 2010 (only if previous litter is unsuccessful)

Russian Cinnamon Outcross Line

DAZL Art Nouveau (Russian Blue Agouti Berkshire Dumbo) x BVR Whizzo (Russian Cinnamon Berkshire Rex) – June 2010

DAZL Ram’s Bladder Cup (Agouti Berkshire) x DAZL Wonderful (Russian Blue Self Rex) – August 2010

Siamese Line

DAZL Qannik (Seal Pt Siamese Rex) x DAZL Gwyneira (Black Self Rex)

DAZL Edwin (Black Self Satin) x DAZL Neva (Russian Blue Siamese) or BVR Hope Diamond (Russian Blue Siamese Satin-Rex)

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Over 2 Club!

• FSTR Great Love – 32 mos
• DAZL Step Into the Light – 30 mos (now a great grandmother!)
• DAZL Break Me Shake Me – 26 mos
• DAZL Illumination – 26 mos (mother and grandmother)
• DAZL Carry On Amadeus – 26 mos (father, grandfather, uncle to many here)
• DAZL Spin – 26mos (father, grandfather, uncle to many here)
• BVR Bananas in Pajamas – 26 mos
• BVR-FSTR Gimble – 24 mos (grandmother to current siamese litter)
• EKO Battleship – 24mos (grandfather to current siamese litter)

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Those are all the updates for now! I hope you are all enjoying the start of Spring. Don’t forget to GET OUT THERE and look at the wonderful world around you that is blooming with new life each and every day.

I had a great time at this year’s fall show. It was great meeting up with everyone again…and meeting a few ‘new’ people!
Here are our results –

DAZL Skidaddle – Best Agouti Self Buck, Best Agouti Buck
DAZL Triptych (owned by Gabe @ BVR) – Best Agouti Marked Buck
DAZL Art Nouveau – 2nd Best Agouti Marked Buck
BVR Sea of Tranquility  – Best Agouti Self Doe, Best Agouti Doe
DAZL One Tribe (now owned by Dee @ ODD) – Best Provisional Buck
DAZL Fresco -  2nd Best Provisional Buck
DAZL Imma Be – Best Provisional Doe, Best Provisional
DAZL Gold Leaf -  2nd Best Provisional Doe
DAZL Ring-a-ling (now owned by Kate @ FHR) – 3rd Best Provisional Doe

Did Not Place:
DAZL Elijah – American Blue Siamese Buck
DAZL Boom Boom Pow – Russian Cinnamon Hooded Buck
DAZL Showdown – Russian Blue Agouti Self Buck
DAZL Party all the Time – Russian Blue Agouti Self Buck
DAZL Twiddle Me This – Russian Cinnamon Berkshire Dumbo Doe
DAZL Electric City – Russian Blue Agouti Berkshire Dumbo Doe
DAZL Harmony – Russian Cinnamon Variegated Dumbo Doe
DAZL Rosemaling – Russian Cinnamon Variegated Dumbo Doe

New Additions

ODD Crempog has been integrated into our rattery and we are pleased to announce the introductions went very smoothly. Pogo is an adorable floppy boy with a very meek demeanor. Our plans for Pogo may be to use him in our Russian Cinnamon outcross line in mid-2011. Until then we will continuously evaluate him for health and conformation. We’re pretty positive his temperament will remain of the butter-stick goodness variety. Many thanks to Dee at Odyssey Design Rattery for letting us adopt this cute fella!

Litter Due This Month!

DAZL Carry on Amadeus (23 months) was bred to BVR Sea of Tranquility (12 months) and they are expecting their bundles of joy anytime after December 7th. We brought in several rats in hopes to use them in an outcross line but Tranq is the one to come through with everything including just the right temperament to compliment our line. This is a very important litter for our program and we will be keeping at least 2 males and 2 females from this pairing. We currently have 3 spots still available on our waiting list. If interested, please look at our adoption policies and fill out our application — all of which are located on our website in the Info section.

Health Update – Important for All Adopters!

We have some unfortunate news to add to our Health Tracker page. The stubborn facial abscesses that we have been monitoring for since 2007 have shown themselves in 3 rats from our line. DAZL Me, Myself & I and DAZL Bombs Up in My Face from the SGR Nestle Crunch x DAZL Holiday Flare outcross litter in 2007 have succumbed to the facial abscess that does not react to treatment of any kind. Recently we have also become aware of a third rat in a pet home, DAZL Sense of Humor (Fawn Rex Dumbo Female) that has developed a facial abscess. All three have developed their abscess at just before or just after their second birthday.

If you have adopted a rat from our Russian Cinnamon line since 2007 and your rat is nearing 2 years of age please be on the lookout for a lump inside, just before or just under the ear on either side of the face.

Please contact me with any information.

At this point in time none of the rats that have been bred have been affected. As the rats from this line come to 2 years of age we will be better able to determine just how ingrained it will be in our line and therefore how to proceed. These abscesses are stubborn and do not improve with any treatements sought. Once the lump is exposed it grows rapidly and interferes with everyday activities. To prevent unnecessary pain and discomfort it is best to have the rat humanely euthanized before this occurs.

Part of why we linebreed and inbreed our line is in order to bring to the surface issues that are lying underneath. This way we can weed them out instead of having them surprise us a few years down the line. This is what has occurred here with this situation. We will continue to closely monitor the rats in our program as well as those in pet and breeder homes. Based on the data we will have from the January 2008 and June 2008 litters we may cease adoptions to other breeders until we see a decrease in the number of rats with this affliction. If we continue to see this affect a percentage of rats from our November 2008 litter we may cease adopting out to pet homes entirely until a decrease is noted.

Our current litter by DAZL Midnight Sun x DAZL Twiddle Me This is fully reserved except for one male. This male can be reserved and paired with a boy from the December litter(s).  He will not be placed by himself.

Dazzle Me is making preparations to attend the RFL Show on November 14th in Lansing, MI. If you wish to see a nice variety of rats from the area, learn all about shows and judging, meet up with new and old friends, then I highly suggest attending! More information to be found here.

We will be welcoming a new addition to the rattery. ODD Crempog is a Russian Cinnamon Berkshire Dumbo buck out of DAZL Bleep Urchin and ODD Tropicana at Odyssey Design Rattery.  Dee does a fantastic job socializing her bubs and we can’t wait to meet Pogo next month!

This notice is to announce that Dazzle Me will not be accepting new adoption applications.

We will not be placing rats other than those previously agreed upon with fellow breeders and previous adopters.

The website will be maintained as we see necessary with health updates taking top priority.

Our presence in the community will continue, though to what extent we are unsure of at this time.

-Melina

From the show we adopted the following rats:

• ODD Imperial Palace – Russian Silver Self buck

• ODD Paris – Russian Silver Self Dumbo doe

The Russian Silvers are lovely bright individuals. I rat-sat and transported a lovely Russian Silver boy last fall. I had forgotten how much I adore that icy blue color. Paris and Palace are sweet kids and both are nice sized for their age. We’re still working on intros with Palace, but Paris settled right in with Samba, Tart, Angel, Honeymoon and Summer. Paris and Samba look indenticle except for their coloring! We’ll be having a litter around the Holidays between DAZL Edwin and ODD Paris for the start of a Russian Silver Satin line.

• BVR Fire and Rain – Russian Cinnamon Self buck

Frain is a beautiful boy with a super sweet disposition. He often sleeps curled up on his head and loves to popcorn when he hears the lawn mower going outside. Frain has been intro’d with Wesley, Taameh and Edger. We hope to use him for a Russian Cinnamon outcross in Spring 2010.

Pictures to be added soon!

Rats sent home at the show -

DAZL Merlin – Black Self buck now living with Odyssey Design Rattery. There are plans to pair him with a beautiful Russian Blue girl, ODD Myish Lissah in September.

DAZL Triptych – Russian Cinnamon Berkshire Rex Dumbo buck now living with Bao Varahkii Rattery. Trip will be used for their Russian Cinnamon line sometime next year.

Making Plans

We have cut back and finalized our litter plans for the rest of the year.

• August will see our first litter devoted to Fawn Dumbos. We expect some really nice bright orange teddy bears.

• November is slated for another run of our Russian Cinnamon line – a pairing of our favorite rats.  We expect predominantly Russian Blue Agouti and Russian Cinnamon pups with excellent temperaments.

• In December we will have a litter that is working toward a new goal of Russian Silver Satins. This particular litter will produce Black, American Blue, Russian Blue, and Russian Silvers.

We have cut back our litter plans by half. Over the next six months we will have several rats turning two years of age, including the litter from our 2007 outcross and our 2008 sibling litter. We’re going to take this time to monitor them and reflect on previous litters and how to manuever the lines from here. We’re aiming to have necropsies done on rats that pass on to better grasp exactly where our lines stand in terms of long term health.

We have decided to sit on the Teddy x Gimble litter and not do a sibling breeding as planned. Gwen is a fantastic girl and I’d love to use her but we feel it would be better to monitor and evaluate these guys further before moving forward. We will likely obtain two does from Bao Varakhii and Odyssey Design Ratteries to use with the bucks from my litter to continue forward with my Siamese plans late next year.

We’ve already figured out our breeding schedule for 2010 in which we will have no more than 6 litters. Each of our lines will be run once, with the exception of my Russian Cinnamon line. The RC line will be run twice — once with Variegated rats, and once with low-marked rats. We will have one litter each for our Russian Cinnamon Sub-Line, Fawns, Siamese and Russian Silvers. Running each line once per year will give us plenty of time to truly monitor and evaluate our rats.