Beavis and Buster are picky about their snacks, but they love the cookies inspired by their antics. Peppermint is a favorite. Spearmint ranks up there, too. Heck, even the plain cookies will draw them from their pasture.  Beavis and Buster are two Stevensville, Montana horses who inspired a line of equine cookies that carries their name.  The label on the delicacies draws the eye: A caricature of two toothy-grinned horses, chomping on grains.

Foster and her sister, Sharon Johnson, team up for the business. Johnson, who manages the gift shop at Community Medical Center, works on marketing; the making and baking is shared. The treats actually got started in New Mexico, where Foster ran a construction company. When Johnson and her husband moved to Montana, Foster followed. “They're all-natural products,” said Johnson. “No preservatives, no food coloring, no artificial flavoring.” “They don't need that stuff,” said Foster, producing a package of commercial horse treats that lists caramel color and dextrose potassium sorbate among its many unpronounceable ingredients.

Beavis & Buster cookies are simple, with rolled and regular oats, molasses, wheat flour and some special additions, such as apples and carrots in some, and the two most popular versions with either whole peppermint or spearmint candies embedded in the centers, the basic ingredients mixed with mint leaves from the garden. “Horses can smell almost as good as dogs,” said Foster. “I always wondered what kind of cookies horses would like. I experimented through the years, seeing what worked. This is what I came up with.” The New Mexico Department of Agriculture certified the treats for sale in New Mexico, and the product found a niche market at the time.

Beavis and Buster, the horses and the treats, came to Montana with Foster. The whole Johnson-Foster clan - Sharon and her husband, Ralph, Charlotte, the horses, 60 sheep, one cat named Mellie, and a 16-year-old half-chow, half-golden retriever named Muffin - all make their home on a ranch south of Stevensville.

Cooking the biscuits happens as orders demand. Raw ingredients are kept in bulk at the house.  After the recipe is mixed up, muffin tins are filled and baked in standard ovens for hours at a low temperature, the smell of molasses filling the house.  “Everyone asks me, ‘What do you do?'  I had to come up with something,” Foster said. “I tell them I'm an Equine Chef”.  In Corvallis, at Sapphire Events Center, owners Cindy and John Stefka use the treats as rewards for horses working in the arena. The Stefkas buy them by the bucketful, and the horses know when it's time for a taste. “They'd head right over there and help themselves if we let them,” he said. “They know they're getting a treat, and they can't wait”!