For rats try mixing 50/50 cornflour and builders dry cement powder.
Place around your yard in old takeaway trays.make sure your dogs wont eat it.they shouldn't .poison laying around will kill them though.
rats will feed on the cornflour without noticing the cement and then look for water,drink the water and get mighty stoned literally.
You can thank the farmers wife who shared the recipe with me as I stared endlessly at dozens of poisons in the pest section of our local hardware. I never tried it but she assured me it cleared her chicken pen of rats without harming her dogs.in the end we got pest control in for our rat problem and I went to a farmers depot and bought stronger poison to double up dosage.We also got a few traps and added jelly snakes coated in peanut butter which works well.more about that a little further on.I also nailed my poison blocks down so they couldn't be moved by the rats.
One thing though....don't hesitate.spring into action asap .vermin rats, mice cockroaches can multiply with speed.
Saying that,I hate killing things.....so our rat story..Our new human neighbours moved in a few years back renting and decided a chicken coup was a good idea at the rear of their yard backing onto our yard.geez great idea...why would You want to put an animal in a cage and then teach your kids ( two 4 yr old girls)it's a good thing not to mention all the other vermin chickens and their feed attract to your e property.
My opinion on chickens in cages on small city blocks is....there a store that sells eggs nearby... free range,organic,whatever You want its there....buy your eggs there lol...dont get me started on teaching kids to fish lol.
Anyway,Suddenly we had rats in our loft, which in turn would have brought snakes.We played cool and didn't report the tenants to council,even though there coup was illegal,but made a little fuss to their rental agency that we were not happy with our new guests Mr and Mrs Rat.
Thankfully,my neighbours moved out 6 months later to the countryside to live with chickens ,rats & snakes.
We have had no rats since.thank fuck I'm relieved....Being high and seeing rats around your place is unnerving to say the least.it made me feel nauseous and like it was a battle of wits between us and the rats.rats will leave a trail of pheromones into you're property so all future rats will head straight to where the previous rats partied.
In our house that place was right above our bed.Some nights the raucous carried on well into the early hours.
Another time we had paper moths.they were so cute I thought buzzing about in our lounge,so I left them alone until we got infested with the things almost overnight.we bought a UV water trap thing from the local hardware which sorted the issue out over a few evenings.
Damn animal orgies in your house.
Best of luck.