Has anyone successfully gotten their sleep deprived horse to sleep regularly?
What worked?
I’m currently trying to get her to sleep in the indoor, she gets tired to where she wants to fall down, but just won’t.
Vet told me to try to find what works for her and replicate it to make it a long term fix.
She has many issues caused by not sleeping, so this is now priority to get her to lay down. She rolls fine and has no issues getting up and down.
Loose in the indoor arena by herself?
Mine sleep best in a deeply bedded banked stall with fans blowing on them.
They eat hay for about 30 minutes, then plop down and lay down for a couple hours snoozing.
Yes, alone in the indoor. I sit in there with her and she just stands next to me. No calling, very relaxed.
She’s not heard sour in anyway, she’s attached to me.
She’s in at night in a stall with decent bedding and soft stalls. As far as we can tell, she’s grey so easy to tell, she has laid down once inside since beginning of February when we moved to this farm. I’ve had her for coming 3 years and that’s the only confirmed time she’s been down in a stall.
I wouldn’t expect any horse to lay down to sleep in the indoor arena, if that’s what you mean.
My mare had an accident last year and wouldn’t lay down for close to a month (she’s a 2-5 hour a night sleeper). I started her on CBD pellets (https://mikkoschoice.com/) and she laid down the second night. She’s smaller (15.2) and got two scoops each evening. Worked like a charm.
I’ve been working on resolving this with my mare for years now, my heart goes out to you. She is 7 and has been struggling with SD at least as long as I’ve had her (since she was 3) but most likely even longer as she came from the track, and has quite a few serious issues as a direct result of her SD. It is an extremely difficult and heartbreaking condition to resolve.
I could list all the things here that I have tried over the years, but ultimately every horse with SD is SO different. You need to figure out first if they are not laying down to sleep due to pain or physical dysfunction, disease (Lyme, EPM, PPID, etc.), anxiety, or environmental factors (insecurity, bedding or living preferences, busyness of barn, herd and stall buddies, etc.) For my mare, after trying literally everything she finally started sleeping this past spring when I moved her to a new barn with a 10+ acre grass turnout and calm friends that she felt safe with. This ended, however, after only a couple weeks when a new gelding was introduced that chased them around and mounted her whenever she was in heat. Despite him being removed recently she has not yet gone back to sleeping.
I’d encourage you to join the “Horses With Narcolepsy And Sleep Deprivation” group on FB - it is an incredibly active group with people sharing their stories, what has worked for their horses vs. what hasn’t, etc. and Dr. Joe Bertone (an expert in sleep deprivation) is active there as well.
Similar situation with mine that I mentioned above. Aside from her accident, it has always been incredibly rare for her to lay down if she’s with the herd overnight. She’s been with ~8 different horses over the past 7 years at my home farm, and the current herd is the first one since she moved in with a buddy that she’s felt comfortable with. Still, most nights she goes into a private paddock with her own stall while the rest of the herd (4 horses) shares 5 acres and 4 stalls to sleep in. It works well for them, but it took a lot of trial and error to find the right situation for her.
I must have an outlier 
. He’s on modified turnout solo in the indoor while he rehabs from laminitis. The joke is he likes sleeping in the king size bed baha.
I don’t have any epic suggestions OP, I’d try making whatever place she seems to feel the safest in extra comfy for her.
Thanks everyone. She’s 18, I got her at 15 with a very unknown past. Lots of trama that I have had to undo from her. We have come so far, but feel like we never get anywhere really.
She’s out daily from 8am until dusk, so between 7-8pm now, just before the night bugs come out. She’s out with 3 other mare are they all get alone wonderfully. They are in a decent sized grass field with shelter. She recently had bladder stone removal surgery that required an overnight stay at the clinic and it seems she took a turn for the worse sleep wise after this. Surgery was a huge success in her other behavioural issues.
My vet said just try whatever makes her seem the most relaxed. His suggestions based on other cases were the indoor, a paddock we can dedicate to her sleep, that there has to be a place she will sleep on the farm somewhere.
She’s super chill in all ways on the ground, the stresses she has when I got her seem to have been resolved. Because of the lack of sleep she’s so body sore and won’t gain weight, so I’ve decided to spend the next few weeks trying to find what she needs to sleep. We board out but have an amazing barn owner that will help us set up trials.
She’s such an awesome mare, teaching me so much and just rock solid to ride, when she’s feeling good.
I have one. He’s 17 years old this year. It’s the second one I’ve dealt with, the first one was 50 years ago (wow, scary to write that). No one had any idea at that time what I was even talking about… that the horse fell asleep, wouldn’t lie down, then fell down CONSTANTLY. He did it at Spruce Meadows, in the East Meadows barn, tacked up for his class when I went back to my tack box for something and my Mother was holding him, and a bunch of schoolchildren were being taken on a barn tour right past him. CRASH!!! No children were hurt. But THAT’s how fast it happened. He went to his class that day with blood on his lip, where his nose had hit the pavement in the barn aisle.
At home, he would put his head and neck over our LOG fence in his paddock, or over the VERY STRONG stall door, and hang himself there, to hold himself up. At horse shows, I’d try putting stable bandages on, then figure 8 bandages over his knees, to try to put pressure on the fronts of his knees to hold them from collapsing. The vets looked at me like I was crazy, and shrugged. I wrote to Dr, Malcom Mackay-Smith about this, but he had no helpful input. This horse was competitive at the 4’6" and up to 5’ jumper divisions… for years. And I was a kid. He started doing it as a 3 year old.
The horse was an unraced TB gelding, who we had purchased as a yearling from the breeder, as a show horse prospect when I was 12.
And now, I have another one. Same paint job as the original too… chestnut gelding, four high whites, blaze. (Does that have anything to do with it??? (joke)). The current one is an unraced, home bred TB gelding. Lives a stress free life. Has never been stabled, lives here at home, with his friends and family. He’s turned out to graze at night in the summer months, in a paddock during the day. Free feed top quality hay, and a small amount of breakfast with vitamin/mineral mix. Been to one horse show in his life. Talented. Open sores on the fronts of his ankles in summer, from falling down. I’ve found that putting some vaseline on those seems to help then not get worse and bleed… seems to make them slide rather than “catch” on the ground when they knuckle over.
My current case was at the vet’s yesterday to have his teeth floated. She looked at his ankles, I explained the situation, and she shrugged. Eventually, something will break when he falls. This is what happened to the first edition… we presume that he broke his neck. He was “ataxic” one morning, and put down that day, That was in 1985. He was a horse of note. He made me into the horseman I am today. He was a superstar that I got to sit on.
Good luck with your case, if you have one. I have few answers for you.
I would highly recommend talking to an animal communicator. I worked with Joanna (https://www.thewildthread.com/) when my mare had her accident (which also resulted in a hospital stay), and Dora was able to share why she was having sleep issues. You will likely learn a lot from your mare, given her unknown past. I’ve worked with Joanna for a few years now with multiple horses, and every session I come away with so much more knowledge about them.
This is adorable and I’m jealous 
what a good boy!
He’s a character!!
Buckskins and duns always are 
This makes me feel better that what’s going on with her is going on and frustrating other owners, lol.
Sleep location trials have shown that the indoor has her the most relaxed followed by her stall. A paddock alone is a no go for her, she wouldn’t stop walking.
She gets sores on the front of her fetlocks, I use quick wrap boots at night to help control them.
Animal communicator was suggested by someone at my barn, along with PEMF and Reiki. Will be exploring these options.
This is my 5th horse over the years, seems like each one I get comes up with weirder and weirder stuff to stump me🤣.
My old guy had sleep deprivation for years after being on stall rest for an injury - he stopped laying down in his stall during the stall rest and never did again. I moved him to a retirement farm where he was out 2/47 and he started sleeping outside with his pasture buddy within the first week.
Can all three of your horses exist happily in the indoor together unsupervised? I’d try that overnight for a while. I’d also try leaving them all out 24/7 and seeing if that helps. Also if the previous farm where you know she was sleeping is close enough, try taking her back there for a few weeks to see if she’ll sleep again. You may also need to shuffle your horses around in case one is making her too uncomfortable to sleep or you may need a slightly larger herd of 4-5 horses for her to feel secure sleeping.
For the fetlock sores, I used these. When I needed to treat the sores a bit more aggressively, I would use alushield spray, a nonstick bandage or Animalintex, and wrap with Elastikon and it would stay on for a few days before needing to be changed.
This is SUCH a difficult and hardly studied issue in horses. I have a 2014 OTTB who hasn’t layed down to sleep in at least 3 years. After much research I found Audrey DeClue who has studied horses with SD and how to treat them. Through her I found a vet near me who uses similar diagnostic and treatment protocols. My horse has been in treatment with this vet since November 2022. We found a lot of lameness issues, like a broken pelvis likely as a foal, that we have been treating. However, he still won’t lay down to sleep.
I have no idea what caused my horse’s issue. He is turned out about 12 hours a day. Has 2 long-term pasture buddies. I stopped taking him on long trips in late 2022 (he doesn’t like trailer rides). He got a few months off after his first “big” treatment in January 2023 and has been in light work since.
Unfortunately I can’t say that anything I’ve done for my horse has helped his SD, but I do think he feels better in his body in a lot of ways. I’m going to give it another year or so of trying with the vet and riding, then if he still is SD maybe just toss him out to pasture for a year and see what happens.
This is such a hard one and my heart goes out to you! However, I’m grateful for this thread and the ability to follow other horse’s journeys. Hopefully we can help each other!
It has been a journey with her in so many ways.
She loves Reiki therapy, just soaks up the energy, we used this to get her to trust us.
We have an osteopath that she sees regularly that she just melts into that body worker, that’s her favourite person.
We have some other stuff going on that I’m waiting for bloodwork results from to decide next steps.
I completely agree this is a side effect of something else physical for her. We thought the bladder stone begin removed was the key, but it was just a layer to her problems. It’s sad because she loves to be ridden and to work.
Due to her other issues she not being ridden, and the heat has given her the week off from even being lunged.
She’s lucky she cute🤣
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