Idea of the Day: Self-adhesive ice packs

What do you do if you twist your ankle, strain your back or bruise your shoulder somehow? Ice it, of course.

Why? Because chilling the affected area reduces swelling and discomfort. Ahh…that’s better.

I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday. I went to my daughter’s barn with her, and took pictures of the horses so she could print them out and personalize her locker. As soon as we got there the owner told us about a horse that had broken free during the night, and the resulting conflict between him and two other geldings. They were all in fairly rough shape, with some open wounds and assorted welts.

Obviously horses don’t have hands to hold cold compresses on their injuries. In the cases of leg abrasions, owners can wrap the entire area. But a horse’s back or side is another story altogether. The best you can do in those situations is hose the animal down with cold water every so often.

But what if there were self-adhesive gel packs for this situation? Or even for people to use on their own backs (we can’t exactly hold things on there, you know)? Technology for self-adhesive bras has been around for a while and continues to improve (or so I hear). That is probably comparable, except for the chilling part. I do know that the pet supply market is one of the few areas that has continued to expand even during our current economic recession. Tomorrow I’ll have to put my other thinking cap on, and do some additional market research around this.