Trickee Treats

We’ve all been there. Covered in white, sticky paste as your horse tosses his head, clamps his jaw down and refuses to open his mouth and accept his de-wormer! Trying to get a paste de-wormer into your horse’s mouth often results in him and you being covered in half of the tube of paste, which only makes the horse angry and even more determined not to ingest the other half of the tube. My experiences haven’t been good. Or even acceptable. I’ve tried everything – washing out old de-wormer tubes and filling them with apple sauce, using empty de-wormers to sensitize Dancer to the feeling of them in his mouth, using pellet de-wormers, etc… Dancer always knows when it’s the “treat” tube and when it’s the real thing…and he reacts accordingly! Prevously, it would take me 30-45 minutes of arguing with him before he finally let me insert the de-wormer into his mouth.

And then something amazing came to me in the form of a miraculous new treat – Trickee Treats! I read the reviews online and they seemed too good to be true. These hollow treats are big enough to fit an entire tube of de-wormer inside and still have a little room on top for shaved carrot or apple sauce. I reluctantly ordered them with great hope that this would be the answer to my de-wormer struggles. The process was very easy – fill the treats with something your horse likes (in my case applesauce and diced carrots) and give it to your horse for a few days that that he/she will think it’s just a fun new treat. Then comes the sneaky part. After a few days of your horse loving the new treat, you throw them off by adding the de-wormer to the inside. I also went so far as to stuff as much diced carrot on the top as I could so Dancer wouldn’t smell the wormer. I went about my business like normal and offered him the treat. And…SUCCESSS!! He at it without spitting anything out! I tried not to celebrate too much so he wouldn’t know anything was up. I saw him slow his chewing down and smack a few times like something seemed a little off, but he continued to swallow it so I pretended not to see the initial reaction. The next day, we continued with the “good” treats just so he wouldn’t think they were all bad.

The point is to get your horse used to having good treats inside of the Trickee Treat and then just slipping in a de-wormer treat. This throws them off a little, so you have to make sure to give them a “good” treat right after the de-wormer one. I think I’ll slowly integrate these “good” treats into his normal treat routine so that when it comes time to worm him again, he will accept it without protest. That is my hope anyway! I wish you all the best of luck with these. I know they have taken a lot of stress out of our lives!!