Easter Treat Hunt from DIY Horse Ownership

So I was feeling a bit festive and decided to partake in Olivia's Easter Treat Hunt with the ponies. It was ummm.... mildly successful? 1.5 out of 3 horses actually found the treats and ate them without to much bribing!

2 different sized muffin pans make for different sized cookies!

First off the cookies!!! Part of the deal is the treats had to be homemade and I was excited to try this out. I hadn't made cookies since college (the equestrian club made horse treats one night, I thought they were supposed to be sold somewhere but not really sure how that turned out)

Yeah college!!! Go Equestrian Team!!! I'm the one of the middle squatting down by the black bucket filled with treat mix. Pic credit to Lauren from SMTT

Armed with Olivia's cookie recipe I was ready to conquer the kitchen! But there's a tiny snafu...my husband. We have a firm fast rule in the house in that I'm not allowed in his kitchen and he's not allowed in my barn, It makes for a very happy marriage otherwise....well lets just say I don't like him trying to help in the barn and he doesn't like me trying to help in the kitchen, so we stay away from those areas. It works until I want to make something!!!! But luckily said Husband is a pretty nice guy and I sent him the recipe to show him what I was planning to do. I had to run some errands and when I came back he had made the treats for me!!!! Don't give him to much credit, he just thought it'd be easier to cook them himself than clean up after me or listen to me constantly asking "where's this! Where's that? WTF does this do?" So yes, he made horse cookies for the Easter Hunt :)

Chimi wasn't sure what to think about his bunny ears and flowers

Now armed with cookies and bunny ears I found at CVS it was time to dress the ponies up and go on a hunt! I brought Chimi in and decided he would wear the ears first. Ummmm lets just say he was not amused. But being a good sport he kept them on. I moved some jumps around in my front pasture to the location of the "ring" (barn came with a grass ring but it floods anytime it rains so we just incorporated it into part of the front field. Grass is mostly Bermuda and is still a bit spotty b/c it's not hot enough yet for that type of grass so don't judge to harshly from the pictures!!!) I used the jumps to  "hide" the cookies and off we went!!! 

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I had Chimi's halter on so I could lead him around the area b/c knowing my luck he'd take off up the hill and I'd be left with uneaten cookies. I sort of lead him to the cookie area and let him try and find them so it was still a "hunt". First egg we went looking for was on the jump standard and Chimi actually found the cookie! He knocked the cookie off the standard and then proceed to sniff it on the ground before actually eating it. After he finished cooking number 1 we headed over to the white barrel for cookie number 2! Aaaannnd that was a big fail. By this point he was done with the cookies and just wanted to eat grass. He did nose the cookie so I know he found it but it was not in his "flavor" at that moment. He walked off and started nibbling the grass shoots that are starting to come up. 

I sort of gave up on Chimi and just let him wander away to much on the grass and went over to the gate where Marley and Arrow were patiently waiting b/c they wanted to go out on the front field too! I put our a few more treats,  put some flowers in their hair, and let them just walk out to the front field and see if they'd find any of the cookies. 

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I had high hopes for Arrow because he seemed to like the cookies the most when I tested them out on them earlier but he could of cared less about hunting for treats. But it ended up being Marley who was the super star and found 3 of the 4 treats I put out there! But after 2 of the treats she decided she didn't like them anymore and wandered off to eat grass. I did end up throwing the treats right in front of Arrow's nose and that was the only way I could get him to attempt to find any cookies. He just wanted to enjoy his afternoon and not worry about entertaining me...what a silly old man he can be :)

Arrow looking quite adorable with his flower accessory!

So over all it was a semi successful day with the treat hunting! I think my ponies would rather I feed them treats directly from my hand instead of making them search for them but overall they were good ponies and amused me for an afternoon!