You remember when I said it was Nipper who was injured, not me?  Apparently, I spoke too soon.

It’s not an exciting injury, either.  I just tripped over my own feet on the gravel road at the farm and sacrificed skin on my left knee and right hand to the hungry earth.  If I’d gone down anywhere else, it wouldn’t have even been worth a mention, but as it was gravel, I bled like I’d opened a vein.

I’d gone to the farm before Martin to play with the horses, so I didn’t even have anyone to give me a hand.  But I sucked it up, limped to the sink, then appreciated the freedom to let loose in a lot of screaming and swearing as I scrubbed the grit out.  The knee was the worst of it – I couldn’t even get a good look at how badly I’d damaged myself because it was bleeding so heavily.  I just slapped a sterile wound dressing and a bandage on top of it, and then covered my hand in a mass of band-aids.  My left hand had a few scratches and scrapes too, but they were very minor, and most of them didn’t even need a covering.

Then I went to play with Flash, because he always needs handling.  Funny thing, though – he seemed upset by the smell of my injuries.  When I approached him, I held out my hand to say that I wanted him to come close and not move away from me, but the hand I held out was my right hand, the more severely injured one, and he sniffed at it, snorted loudly, then started shuffling away.

I got him in the end though, and just did some groundwork with him.  Then Martin turned up and it was time to take care of Nipper.

Nipper and Missy hadn’t managed to open the gate between them this time, so that was something.  Just like Flash, Nipper sniffed at my hand and snorted, though he didn’t back away.  And when I stopped him to open a gate, he touched his nose to my knee and sniffed and snorted again.  I’m not sure if they could smell the blood, or if the bandages/band-aids smelled funny to them, but either way, they didn’t approve of it.

Missy didn’t care, though that might be because I didn’t really get close to her – just opened the gate to let her out into the paddock.

Martin and I gave Nipper his injection, and then changed his dressing again.  His injury is looking much better; nicely scabbed over, and some of the swelling has gone down.  I gave him some horse liquorice as a treat after we were finished, to stop being caught and handled getting a negative association in his mind.  This way, his little horsey-brain thinks ‘yeah, they jabbed something in my neck and poked at a painful area, but I also got some really delicious food’.

We gave him some more hay and water, then it was back to Turtle Shell (stopping at the shop on the way to pick up some supplies).  The band-aids on my hand were falling off, and I wanted to check on my knee again and try to clean everything up a bit better.  I also took photos, so you too can share in my misery.

The knee:

Much better than I thought it was.  There was so much blood I thought I’d lost everything on top of the kneecap, but I think it just came from a few of the deeper scratches.  I also learned it’s hard to get a good camera angle on your own knee.

The hand:

That chunk of missing skin at the edge of my palm was the real trouble-maker – the band-aids didn’t stick because that area was leaking so much serous fluid it was saturating them.

I scrubbed them out again, because at this point I could spot a few pieces of dirt I’d missed the first time around.  This is why you try to do a thorough clean immediately – I think it actually hurts more after it’s been given some time to swell and really think about what you did to it.  Then I applied some anti-bacterial spray, which made me scream and hop around for a few seconds – they really burn!

Then I applied the bandages:

Honestly, the hand isn’t nearly as bad as the knee, but it’s just in such a tricky place the bandage was all that stayed on it.  I’m hoping that once I’ve slept on it, a nice little scab will form and I can take off the bandage, but we’ll see how it goes.