That is kind of funny to me. Did she really not know that chocolate can have caffeine in it?
I am surprised this warrants an article.
I think I was still in school, an that’s when we had slate to write on…well hardly, but still had ink wells and an ink monitor to fill them up, when we were told to quit giving treats to anything that was showing because of testing. No it’s not new.
According to this site, peanut M&Ms have about 5mg of caffeine (I assume per serving,) so that says something impressive about the sensitivity of our testing. Or the size of the “handful” given to the horse.
It’s been a long time since I competed in shows where drug testing was a standard protocol, but if my horse snarfled someone’s Snickers bar, the caffeine content would not have been my first concern.
This is why my horse prefers not showing. She NEEDS to share ALL my candy. Except the citrus flavoured ones. Those are disgusting.
Lol, I worked with a horse that loved the citrus Lifesavers, which worked out because I preferred the cherry and pineapple.
When I posited upthread that my horse might snarfle someone’s Snickers bar, what I actually mean is that he WOULD do it, and your gummy bears, and your peanut M&Ms, and your Lifesavers, and your Starburst, and everything except for the Cinnamon Red Hots, which he will graciously share with you.
He once incurred my trainer’s wrath at a horse show by wrecking the snack table. It had been set up near his stall and proved too much of a temptation. He grabbed the tablecloth in his teeth, pulled it towards him, and, before everything fell, somehow snagged the big bowl of cheese puffs and pulled that into his stall, whereupon he feasted. I told her not to put the snack table there because his neck can be made longer than it looks…
Needless to say, I find the rider’s story about the peanut M&Ms to be very plausible, and I AM SYMPATHETIC.
Dying of laughter! My current is pretty polite, but one I was showing for someone years ago was a real ham and although WE thought he was pretty polite, he was fooling us. After a long trailer ride I decided I’d get in a hand walk and registration all at once. Once. Uh huh. ONCE I fished all the fully wrapped Werther’s out of his fool gob, I was able to register. He had snaked his go go gadget neck over my shoulder, zoomed in on the large bowl of candy and did his best impersonation of a well-functioning grapple and hoovered up a giant mouthful wrappers and all.
I am familiar with the problem.
Of course they do their best work in public, where you’re dying of shame trying to fish it out of their mouths, or else they steal food from a child.
Years ago, a child’s pony got nailed for caffeine.
Turned out she was sharing her Mountain Dew with him.
The hearing official tolde her to stick to lemonade in the future.
Lucky for me I was a trail rider but my horse still would not have been allowed to have my M&M’s or my Mt. Dew - nobody who valued their fingers was allowed to have them.
Now those crummy stuffed caramels from the gas station were a different story:)
That said, when the stakes are that high, I would have been a lot more conscious of what I was handing my horse, “just in case”.
