The Poop Report OR Road Apples to Go

I have a horse (as if you didn't know), and one of the things as a horse owner you get to do is worm your horse on a regular basis.  Well, let's be real about this - it means you make your horse eat this apple tasting toxic poison that will kill what ever nasty parasites he has managed to ingest and are now happily living in his gut. Generally, you did this every 12 weeks, sometimes more often.  Some individuals had their horses on a continuous wormer. Because the things that can live in a horses gut can be quite diverse you keep changing what toxic mess you give the horsey so the little nasties in their guts don't develop resistance.  Now there was for many years a subset of "nut cases" (probable tree huggers and granola eaters) that felt poisoning one's horse on a regular basis was a pretty stupid idea.  In fact, they insisted that you should collect the poop and actually look and see what parasites were in the poop and if there were no parasites then don't WORM! What a concept.  Others, me included, just didn't worm as frequently, thus avoiding the whole "nut case" label. Then one day, my vet became one of the "nut cases" and said "Hey, we need to collect poop when it starts getting warm before we decide if we should do anything".  It's okay if my vet becomes a "nut case", because he received important Vet School Research that said:  "Dude, poisoning our horses regularly turns out not to be so good for them".    So there I was making my 40 minute drive out to the barn to lock the Drake-Monster in his stall for the night.  Did I mention that the vet only takes said poop on Monday and Tuesdays between 8 and noon, and it better be fresh poop?  Then I was back out at the barn the next morning early with my little zip lock sandwich bag in hand to grab a road apple or two and then drive another 30 minutes to the vet's office.  Horse people must be pretty weird or wired funny.  When my kids were small and I had to do a poop clean up I would be gagging and trying not to toss my cookies, but I can waltz right into a stall, spy the freshest steamer and grab a handful of road apple through an inside out zip lock, flip that plastic baggy right side out, zip it shut and not even think anything unusual has occurred.  In a couple of days I will get a little post card that says what, if any nasties, are lurking in Draco's gut and what I should do about it.  So until then life goes on and my horse is poison free for the moment.