There is nothing quite like the Zen state of mind achieved by cleaning horse poop. I think any horse owner would agree with me, right?  Right?  Ok, some horse owners might agree with me. Maybe it’s just my nature to feel most comfortable in a dusty, dirty barn or maybe my obsessive-compulsive tendencies are satisfied by the methodical act of picking a stall. 

Right now, I’m in horsey heaven because Tiny’s surrogate mom is at a volleyball tournament with her daughter.  Enter Michelle, Stage Right.  Under the guise of “helping Emma” while she’s away, really I’m just scratching a long standing itch to clean poop.  I mean, cleaning stalls has been part of my life for many years, up until I moved to Orlando and started boarding my horses 6 years ago.  Don’t get me wrong, it is a relentless, thankless task.  There are days when you come home and the last thing you want to see is horse poop. 

But for the most part, there is nothing in the world like barn tasks.  Each horse has their own poop style and each one warrants a different approach to poo picking.  Tiny is a litter box pooper.  She poops in the corners of her stall and covers it with shavings.  Cute, until the entire contents of her stall is layered amongst neatly stacked piles of poo in the back.  Abby is a pile pooper.  She likes her poo in piles around the edges, carefully placed to appear as though she doesn’t care where it’s landed.  And then there’s April….the classic known as the “Poop Walker”…the whole center of the stall is a soup of poo and pee and shavings, all stirred together.  Guess which one’s my least favorite?

Ah, I digress.  So anyway, as I was cleaning stalls this evening after a long, stressful drive, I realized how wonderful it is to come home to that task.  The sound of the horses nickering for their feed as I arrived, the sound of them munching on their grain as I puttered around the barn.  The smell of the fly spray and the hay.  The comfort of being surrounded by animals; horses, dogs, cats, chickens…. My stress and anxiety melted away with each pile of poo I picked, each clump of dirt that I swept.  I love watching the transformation of the barn into readiness for the next day’s events.  So as I gathered up Grady and Bella to head home, my blood pressure back to normal and my road rage diminished, I remembered once again why I love horses so much.