Odie's Oatie Horse Cookies

I'm proud to say that this is an original recipe. You can whip out a batch of these in 10 minutes flat and they're delicious. Just ask Odie.

I have been feeding him a couple of these a day to improve his skin & coat. I hope that this will completely, finally, once and for all, heal the "naughty mare" bite on his back from last summer.

If anyone has ideas for other ways to help it, please let me know. I'm willing to try anything within reason! These cookies are just the "keep it simple" (and cheap) approach that I decided to do first before buying supplements.

The two clever ingredients in the cookies are bananas and ground flax seed. I added the bananas because I once read the results of a horsey taste-test in Equus magazine that rated banana flavor as a surprising favorite among horses.

The flax seed should benefit a horse's skin & coat. I came up with this idea thanks to the SmartPak catalog; most of the skin & coat supplements had flax seed as the active ingredient.

I buy flax seed in bulk at Whole Foods. We have a coffee/spice grinder that works well to grind it up. You could try using them whole but grinding them gives the digestive system better access to the oil inside the seeds.


Odie's Oatie Horse Cookies
2 c. oats
1 1/2 c. flour (whole wheat or white)
2 t. salt
1/4 c. olive oil (or any vegetable oil)
1/4 c. honey
1/2 c. water
2 mashed bananas
1/2 c. ground flax seed

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix everything in a large bowl. The back of a large spatula cuts through the sticky dough easily. Shape balls of dough and place on ungreased cookie sheets. If I'm making these with helpers, we do smaller balls on two sheets. If I'm in a hurry, I make about 20 larger balls on one sheet. Whatever works. Take a fork and press down carefully to flatten each ball; then turn the cookie sheet 90 degrees and do the same thing again so each cookie gets a criss-cross pattern like those old-fashioned peanut-butter cookies. This is not just for looks--it helps them bake evenly. Throw in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Turn oven off and let cookies sit for a few hours or whenever you remember to get them out. Pop cookies off the sheets with a metal spatula; store in a paper bag.