First Aid Kit Updates

When I first bought my trailer, I developed a rather thorough and obsessive first aid kit that lived in the tack trunk in the trailer. I sold the trailer several years ago, and moved the first aid kit to my tack area at the barn, and then sort of ransacked it/combined it with my tack trunk kit/created injury-specific kits in buckets whenever I had to treat Tristan for something. Which, as you know if you’ve been reading this for any length of time, is multiple times a year.

One of my goals in advance of Lockdown 2.0 was to thoroughly update his trailer first aid kit and no longer half-ass it or rely on the barn’s supplies for backup. So, that was the project last week.

Anything expired got tossed, obviously. I also worked from an inventory list and double-checked quantities and anything that was missing. My lube had walked off somewhere, so I ordered more from Amazon and let me tell you, my recommended buys are something else right now.

There were also some things I used more than others, and some things I’d never used, and some things I’d accumulated way too much of. Did I really need three separate knives? No. So I kept two: a bigger flip-out one and a smaller combination Swiss Army style knife.

(True story: I once dinged a Pony Club group at a rally because Pony Club requires that any knife in your first aid kit should be able to cut through three cords of bailing twine, and theirs was terribly dull. Later that same day I dinged another group because their digital thermometer battery was dead. I really loved judging stable management.)

I had also never used the suture kit (?!). I tested everything that needed it, and swapped out two of the pens for working ones. The flashlight was still in good shape. I re-upped all the gauze, because you can never have too much gauze, honestly.

I also found some liquid gold: brand-name hand sanitizer!

When I was done, I re-packed everything. Some things I decided to package in plastic quart bags to keep them togther. All the pens and notepads, for example. Everything that might conceivably be part of a temperature-taking kit. Stuff that was small enough to rattle around but that I’d want at the same time. I did a small “quick clean” kit with gauze, iodine scrub, etc. – things I’d want to just grab to clean a wound out.

There’s a before & after for you. Ransacked and then neatly re-organized.

Last but not least, I revised the packing list – you can see it in the bottom right hand corner of the above photograph.

Here’s the updated list, which I printed out and which lives in the first aid kit now.

I was left with a handful of supplies that I still need to keep but did not live in a first aid kit; primarily these were specialty things like SWAT, sheath cleaner, and his eye antibiotics.

I had also previously kept a tube of banamine in the kit, but now I keep a jar of the injectable stuff in my tack trunk, and that would be the go-to since he’s at a barn full time now. If I were to go on the road with this kit again, I’d add the banamine back in. Similarly, I don’t have any needles in the kit; those live in my tack trunk.

See anything you’d leave out? Any obvious gaps?