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What do you want to do with your dire rat? "Lacking" is kind of vague. If you mean in a toe-to-toe fight, sure, the dire rat isn't a common pick. They can make good skirmishers and excellent assistants though.
I wouldn't try to turn the rat into some super powerful fighter with Imp. Natural Weapon or Ability Focus (disease.) Disease is never going to be useful as a PC against an NPC, and a damage increase from 1d4 to 1d6 is hardly worth the feat cost. Take advantage of the rat's strengths: good DEX, quick speed, mobility and sneakiness.
One of the best things about dire rats is they are all-terrain vehicles. They get a base, climb and swim speed so they can go just about anywhere without sacrificing too much speed. This sets them up to be good hit and run fighters. With Spring Attack, a rat can move, bite and run up a wall to avoid counter attacks. His high starting DEX and some light armor with Mobility will help him avoid AoO.
The variety of move speeds and their decent Stealth also helps make Dire Rats great scouts. Dire Rats get Scent so tricks like Track and Detect can make your friend useful if you get lost or need to find an invisible foe.
Speaking of tricks, dire rats are also pretty smart so they get a lot of them. I recommend teaching your rat Aid and Flank so he can help you land your attacks or avoid those of your opponent. Rats will team up with other rats to attack in swarms so Flank and Aid also make perfect sense. If you're into Teamwork feats, give your rat an INT3 and take Outflank, Precise Strike or Stealth Synergy to boost combat ability or sneakiness.
With 7 tricks at level one, I'd probably recommend: Attack, Flank, Aid, Track, Sneak, Detect and Break Out. Break Out lets an animal open latches, chew through ropes and bars and fetch loose keys and it gives you a +4 bonus on Escape Artist rolls if the rat can help you escape something.
Finally, don't forget Animal Companion Archetypes. Totem Guide gives your rat some interesting supernatural options (talking to other rats could be a good way to gather information,) and Bodyguard would make the little guy absurdly tough for a rat.
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Spring Attack is definitely about the long game. You don't usually kill a tougher opponent quickly with hit and run tactics, but the Dire Rat's lowish CON and lack of substantial natural armor can make them kind of squishy so it's a good tactic for them if they're going to see a lot of combat. You could just focus on Aid Another, Flanking and scouting so you don't have to spread his abilities so thin.