Brake bleeding with ABS? PIA!!!

Brake bleeding with ABS? PITA!!!

Ok, nobody laugh please, but after owning the car for 18 months, I just found out that is has ABS. The reason I just found out is because they've never worked and I don't get a light of any sort in the control panel when starting the car. First winter I had the car, I drove it, and I gracefully slid thru more then one intersections on snowy mornings without any hint of ABS brake activity.

Now I'm taking things apart to install the new suspension goodies and lo and behold, but here's the ABS sensor, and isn't that the toothed wheel?

Now, the calipers are already out of the car, figured it would be simpler to totally take them out since I'm putting in stainless steel brake lines.

The problem is the Haynes manual says that bleeding the brakes on an ABS equipped vehicle requires special tools and is complicated and blablabla.

Anybody here knows anything on this subject?

Thank you.

Well, I disconnected the lines from the calipers and let them drain totally. I wanted to change the fluid since it's the original one (10 years old).

I'd like to know too why the ABS never kicked in when I was sliding while braking?