A dog walker has told how she feels lucky to be alive after being attacked and thrown "like a rag doll" into a hedge by a rampaging cow.
Mum-of-two Saffron Anderson, 44, suffered severe cuts and bruises all over her body, and was rushed to hospital following the incident.
She was walking two of her beloved dogs near a herd of cows, but was brutally attacked as one of them struck her with its head and hooves.
She suffered blows to her head, abdomen and side, and at one point the cow launched her off her feet and threw her into a hedgerow.
Ms Anderson, from Chale on the Isle of Wight, spoke today to warn others of the threat posed by cows, even if people like her follow all the correct countryside advice.
Credit: Solent News
Graphic pictures show the extent of the swelling and bruising to her body, including her hips, side, under her arms and chest. She also had cuts to her mouth and eye.
Ms Anderson, who suffers from a degenerative disease in her spine and chronic fatigue syndrome, which limits her movement, was attacked as she walked near her home.
At the time she was with her two dogs - five-year-old Mia, a Chinese crested hairless Yorkshire cross which was tucked under her arm, and one-year-old St Bernard labrador cross Betsy on a lead.
She recalled: "I was trying to take my dogs for a walk. Because I'm not well, I can't go far and I can't drive, so I don't have much of a choice of where I can take them - so it's the place nearest me.
"As I approached the field, there were cows in the way of the footpath, and my bigger dog was on a lead.
"I could see the cows were in the pathway and I needed to wait. So I waited for at least seven minutes for this one cow to move.
"I waited and waited and they all finally moved, leaving me enough space to climb over the stile into the field.
"I went over the stile with my dog on a lead, and the other tucked under my arm, and because the cows were in the field still I didn't let them off the lead or out of my arms.
"I was just about halfway, a few hundred yards into the field, and I was aware that something was moving.
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Credit: Solent News
"I turned around and I could see the cow had come all the way from the other side of the field and was doing a fast trot towards me. It was too close for me to react and I couldn't do anything.
"I dropped my small dog from under my arm and let go of my bigger dog on the lead, as I was hoping the cow would be distracted.
"You are supposed to let the dogs go, but it just swished its head around right into my face.
"I think it kicked me, and I'm now on the ground, looking at the cow's abdomen over me, and I can taste blood in my mouth and I'm aware of the pain to my right abdomen.
"It's then kicked my abdomen and it's trodden on my hip, and I'm lying there thinking "That's it. I'm dead"."
Ms Anderson, who worked as a landscape gardener before suffering from her degenerative disease, was just about able to get herself back on her feet when the cow struck again.
She added: "I got up and I couldn't believe the cow was still there. It put its head right into my chest and threw me up in the air like a rag doll and into a hedge of brambles.
"It was coming towards me for the third time, and I thought it wasn't going to give up."
In the end, she escaped after kicking out while still off her feet, and shouted - alerting her dog Betsy who came over and barked to scare the cow away.