Dogs are such Dogs

Every now and then, they just like to remind you that they are dogs. I can home early last night cos I had a friend ground for dinner. The little monsters weren't at the back door to welcome me like they normally are. They were asleep. Then I noticed that Molly had a huge patch or blood on her back. I got instantly worried that she has scratched herself on one of the dodge nails on the back porch. An examination of the said blood showed that it had come from outside the dog, not inside. So my next thought was that Clara had a hole in her, but no hole or blood could be found on her (she was also not in season early, cos I checked that too).
That left only one yucky option: There was something dead or dying in the back yard somewhere. I really didn't feel like looking for it, it was hot, I was tired and I had to get ready for my guests arrival!
In the second last corner of the yard, I found it. A rat, quite dead, which Molly had clearly been rolling in. Yay. There is really only one possible good part about this story. For the last couple of months (all right it might only be 6 or so weeks, but it feels like months.) We have been being woken at around 5.30am by a rat scratching in the roof of our room. We tried many things to get rid of it:

• Clearing out it's nest and putting chilli oil there
• Filling the space it was living with expanding foam (we thought this might also help with insulation) then he moved
• Getting tuff, we bought a trap
• Then we gave up and bought poison

I wasn't keen on the poison idea, cos of the dogs. But I ended up soooo tired! I just wanted to sleep. That was just before Christmas, so its taken a while to work, if thats what eventually shuffled him off, which as much as I'd love to think it was one of the dogs that got him, I'm fairly sure it wasn't.
He didn't wake me up this morning........ but I'm giving it a few days before I decided it is the roof rat thats died, and not some other random rat.