First of all (vet disclaimer):

My partner and I are out of town and brought two of our rats with us because we thought it would make them happier than being left at home. One is doing great, but the other one not so much - details below. It is the weekend and there are no open vet clinics anywhere near us except ONE, twenty miles away, and their single rat vet does not work until Tuesday, by which time we will hopefully all be home anyway. So it isn't actually an option.

So there is no vet unless we drive many hours with elevation changes (which may make him feel worse) and cancel our plans here. I think/hope he just has an upset stomach and the 4 hours of driving and elevation changes to get here didn't agree with him, but I want to crowdsource ideas how I can make him more comfortable. Obviously, if symptoms persist, I will get him into my regular vet this coming week at home ASAP.

The rats with my, by the way, are Francis and Reepicheep. Francis is living his best life, Reepicheep is the one not feeling good.

Details and symptoms:

Last night Reepicheep seemed more or less fine. He had a normal poop in the evening. This morning, he had one normal poop (defined pellets) and at the same time had some diarrhea - there was a mushy pile next to the pile of pellet poops.

Then we went to take both rats out with us for a walk around the place we are visiting. We regularly take them for walks in our neighborhood at home and they usually love smelling the air and even climbing on trees we will set them on for a moment, as well as saying hi to random neighbors who fuss over them. (They ride on our shoulders and we also have bags they can go in.)

But today almost as soon as we headed out, Reepicheep had more diarrhea - a lot of it. We took him back to the hotel and got him cleaned up (and ourselves). We put him back in his travel carrier. Since then he has just been sleeping most of the day, and some of the time he is making little pained sounds and breathing heavily. His discomfort seems to come and go. Sometimes he sleeps calmly/peacefully (as far as I can tell) and then he will start making the sounds again.

He has dragged himself up a few times to look for food but doesn't seem to have eaten much. I haven't seen any more poop or diarrhea in with him.

I read on one website that you can give them Pepto Bismol (just a tiny drop) and we tried that but he refused it. My partner put a little on his mouth hoping he will lick it off. We also gave him a little bit of plain Greek yogurt - another vet website mentioned that as something that might be helpful. He seemed to be feeling a bit better when he licked up some of that, but then went back to making pained sounds a bit later.

I also thought of Pedialyte, but want to research it more because it sounded like there might be some concerns about it.

I'm going to look up remote vets I could talk to online, but all the ones I have seen only do dogs and cats. Does anyone know one that does rats? (We are in the US.)

Any other ideas? Could this be from elevation changes? The other rat is fine. Is Pedialyte a good idea? Any other suggestions?

Thank you in advance!