A VETERAN Warwick horse breeder is calling for rural workers to pay more attention to safety after a kick from a mare almost cost her life.

Wendy Rodger Claxton was worming and teething her stable of mares when the animal kicked her in the abdomen, shattering a kidney.

The work ran late into the night and rushing to finish up.

"I thought, I've got to get all these mares out of the back paddock so I can put the stallion back in this yard," she said.

Ms Rodger-Claxton walked up behind her 18-year-old mare, Willow Regal Rhymes.

"She is not a malicious horse, she must have thought one of the other mares was coming up behind her because I didn't speak,"

"She must have got spooked by me being there, planted her front feet and she leaped back and kicked me with both her back hooves."

Although she was hurt, Ms Rodger-Claxton didn't initially realise the severity of her injuries.

At first the breeder thought she was only winded and continued feeding before heading inside inside for a shower.

"Meanwhile I was bleeding internally," she said.

"When I got out the shower, I couldn't put my track pants on, couldn't lift my leg, l realised something was wrong.

"I ran my neighbours and asked them to call the ambulance."

Ms Rodger-Claxton walked out the front house and collapsed.

She was taken to Warwick hospital first, then transferred to Toowoomba and finally to the Prince Alexander Hospital in Brisbane where her shattered kidney was removed.

"I nearly died twice because my blood pressure had dropped so low," she said.

"Apparently, when you have a kidney injury, they will try and save part of it, but mine was so masticated they had to remove the whole thing.

Because of the amount of the internal bleeding, the surgeons had to enter through her stomach.

Ms Rodger-Claxton spent a fortnight in hospital and now has a scar that runs from her sternum to her pubic bone.

"There'll be no more bikinis for me," she said.

In almost five decades working with horses, this is the first time Ms Rodger-Claxton has copped a serious injury.

She acknowledged she had opened herself up to injury.

"I was rushing, I was tired, I didn't want to be in the cold," she said.

"I am extremely lucky I have neighbours I could have called, if I was at my last place I could have died. There weren't any neighbours nearby and the ambulance would have taken 30 minutes."

Ms Rodger-Claxton said she hoped other seasoned horse owners would learn form her experience and take steps to avoid being hurt or killed in similar circumstances.