Yes, 1910’s/20s/30s.
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Ok that’s pretty silly. That right there discounts what she’s saying. You can just put her on ignore
I would agree that there can be techniques in riding from the Great Age of horses that are either beyond what most of us can fathom doing now, or even lost. Some people who spent all day every day on horses gained skills that are harder to come by now.
But anything to do with muscle skeletal anatomical metabolic etc is way way further advanced 100 years later and she is likely cherry picking some crank outlier of the day who was mostly guessing.
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I listened to a few episodes last week after seeing it recommended on COTH and I agree. Some of the topics are interesting but the arrogance and dismissal of everyone else’s opinions but her own was very off-putting. I also found her painfully long-winded at times. In one episode she read an entire COTH post and then ridiculed all the respondents for not concluding that the horse they’d never seen was lame. I did not pick up on the early 1900s inspiration so that’s interesting.
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Haha. I feel like we always say “check out pain” right away
Ok, so you’re talking about the front end.
Your post makes it sound like the horse is supposed to be sleeping - truly asleep - on his feet, but pain in any number of places makes that fail.
Horses don’t sleep on their feet. They take little catnaps that are far from “falling asleep”
If a horse is truly falling asleep standing on his feet, that’s sleep deprivation (or narcolepsy, more rare). THAT may be caused by body issues that make him not lie down enough times to get enough REM sleep.
Horses don’t sleep on their feet, they snooze. The sounded horse will fall down if he actually goes to sleep on his feet
Hold the phone, she’s quoting COTH posts on her veterinary sports medicine podcast?
And like @Scribbler said, we always think the horse is lame.
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Following as I am currently going through all of this with my 5 yo OTTB mare - she has colicked 15+ times over the past year (including 2 overnight hospital visits and thousands of dollars in vet bills) and recently found out she is severely sleep deprived after putting a camera on her. She collapses 20+ times/day and never lies down for REM sleep, but she does lie down to roll. I listened to the same podcast episodes you did and had my chiro out, my mare has a lot of pain in her back (despite no saddle for the past two months) + is extremely girthy (we have ruled out ulcers). A lot of her pain responses matched up with the muscles and ligaments mentioned by Dr. DeClue.
I am currently treating her back with TENS and talking to my vet about a 10 day trial of gabapentin as the chiro suggested that she could be neurologically overloaded leading to pain, and haven’t ruled out a big environmental change but want to completely rule out pain as the cause first - as from everything I’ve read on sleep deprivation it sounds like 80-90% of the cases stem from pain.
I really hope you’re able to get it figured out, please keep us posted. I’m trying to learn as much as possible and am desperate to get this fixed for my girl but there’s just not a lot out there.
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Haven’t listened to the podcast but my experience watching my horse who doesn’t lie down to sleep is as-described: his head gets lower and lower and then be nearly falls over before catching himself (that I have seen). It sounds like I might find the podcast annoying anyway.
I don’t think my horse has a hard time getting down or up again but he doesn’t look comfortable going down to roll. I am curious if we’ll see a difference when his knees and stifles are injected. Otherwise I’ve kinda decided not to lose too much sleep myself over this. I keep his stall bedded deeply, he has a laid back buddy that he is comfortable with for turnout and I’m managing his soundness for him to continue to show, let alone be pasture sound.
Second time in a few weeks that I find myself thinking about an animal communicator
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No joke!!! The post was about a OTTB who struggled to canter left in early retraining. Her much-belabored point was the horse must be lame because all they do on the track is go left (never mind that they warm up to the right and use both leads during a race). Maybe the horse is lame, who knows…but the entire tone was very off-putting.
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I’m listening to the first episode right now. “Much-belabored” is a good description. How many different ways can you say the same thing in the course of one hour?
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If anyone has any good ideas on how to deal with this though, I’d like to hear. I have a 28 year old super senior like this. She falls asleep on her feet, the head gets lower and lower, and eventually she falls forward. Most of the time she catches herself but not always. She is an enthusiastic roller so she can obviously get up just fine. No cameras so I haven’t seen what happens overnight, but she has had some cuts on the fronts of her fetlocks lately so it appears that she is falling.
I keep her stall bedded deeply. I also started putting BOT quick wraps on her fronts to provide some padding if she falls.
I have on a very few occasions seen her lay down outside for maybe a minute before getting up. She seems quite calm and content when she does this. So I feel like for her it’s perhaps more behavioral than anything else. She lived by herself for years before I adopted her a little over 2 years ago so I wonder if it’s a survival technique she developed that she just can’t let go of.
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This is generally environmental and behavioral. My horse stopped laying down in his stall to sleep when he was on stall rest, and then herd changes meant he stopped getting good sleep outside for several years. He went to a new farm for retirement last spring with 27/7 turnout in a large pasture with a totally new herd and started laying down the first week. He slept so much for a few months he capped his elbow pretty good and had a bit of a pressure sore on his hip.
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My horse who broke his scapula has some damage to his sling apparatus from that accident. Sometimes his knees, or one knee, isn’t quite locked when he stands. Or he might tend to stand a little more camped under in front. He is sound in front now but obviously was not sound at all in the beginning.
At no point in time has he sleep crashed or shown evidence of it, and he does lie down to sleep every night, and sometimes for a nap during the day. He spends a lot of time dozing standing up, especially after lunch. And he never falls asleep all the way. If anyone would prove this person’s theories, it would likely be this horse.
At some point he had a stall rest neighbor who had a foot injury. She apparently preferred to sleep outside, and while on stall rest was also on some tranquilizers or serious calming herbs. She sleep crashed all the time until she was off the meds and back to turnout. She was able to roll but for some reason was not getting real sleep in her stall and would fall a lot going to sleep standing up.
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My horses sleep deprivation seems to be environmental. He previously had no problems sleeping, until the object of his desire, the Chesnut mare moved into the mare herd at the barn. All other mares ignored, but this one was the one that literally keep him up at night and all hours of the day. Not only did he refuse to lie down, but he also paced the fence, dropped weight, and called and ran when they drifted out of sight in the field across the way.
He had been quite content with his band of 3 boys, so after consultation and exam, we put him on Prozac to break his fixation with the mare of his dreams. He stopped pacing the fence and is now back sleeping again. He is not taking long naps, but his fetlock sores have cleared up and he has at least been seen taking the occasional snooze. We have a plan to wean him off the Prozac to see if this was just a temporary fling or a lifelong addiction. The vet did suggest that I consult an animal communicator to find out why he is not sleeping. I keep toying with the idea but haven’t gone down that route yet.
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I’ve had 2 of my own with sleep deprivation and falling.
Both were OTTBs. Both were in their 20s. Both loved to roll, so I know they could get down. Both were in stable herds. Both hated being stalled.
One thought he was a mustang stallion on the range protecting his band 24/7, so it could have been behavioral. But he also raced 109 times and arthritis caught up with him rapidly in his 20s. I think it was probably a bit of both. I owned him for 15 years and he was never one you would catch lying down, but the falling didn’t start until he was in his 20s.
The other stopped laying down not too long after recovering from a major injury. While she was high strung, I really think hers was pain related. She loved to roll, but getting up and down was a chore for her after her injury. I don’t think she wanted to stay down too long because she knew she couldn’t spring right back up. She is the one I tried PEMF on and it did help for several weeks after.
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It’s a frustrating thing as I don’t think any of us want our horses to be suffering. My understanding is that the current thinking on sleep deprivation is that it’s environmental or pain-related. As I believe I am doing my due diligence on the pain front, that leaves the environment, and I do not have unlimted options to change my horse’s environment. The last pic I have of him lying down he is next to my old horse who did routinely nap every afternoon, but I lost him 3 years ago. I can’t replicate that scenario, as much as I wish I could 
He has a buddy now but this buddy prefers to lie down in his stall (probably for his own security reasons -he’s a great babysitter because he lets anyone and everyone pick on him). I can’t just get another horse just to see if it will get this guy to lie down 
One the many vets who sees my horse had suggested the trazadone to see if it would make him basically not worry about lying down. Another more experienced vet at the same clinic seemed pretty unconcerned about this altogether: he commented on how the thinking on this has evolved over the years so he deferred to the newer vet’s recommendation (the trazodone). But otherwise, he told me about an Olympic level rider’s event horse who had the tell-tale callouses on the fronts of his ankles - I guess at least we are in good company with struggling with this.
ETA: if anyone has an old and tired gelding who lies down every day that I can borrow for an experiment let me know 
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Agree completely
I installed stall cameras and noticed my older mare lying down less and less. She never collapsed (that I saw). But I experimented with some things and found a formula that works for her. She won’t lie down at night unless her stall door to her walk out is closed. She used to lie down inside and out day and night but now she wants that door shut, maybe for security as an older horse?
She also seemed stiffer, and we had been through Lyme and chronic Lyme and EPM (she is a trooper!) so we started massage; she gets one every 10 days right now (better healthcare than me) and that is making massive improvements in her general comfort level. Guessing it’s arthritis in her neck but I’m. Not really sure. She also gets equioxx and OsPhos (3x:year). HTH!
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Back before I bought my farm and still boarded there was a horse that had narcolepsy. I was in the barn late at night and I heard a horrendous crash. None of the horses had any sort of reaction which was strange. I saw where this horse had fallen asleep and fell partly down. That explained the sores on the fronts of his pasterns.
He was an OTTB that I am sure none of his joints would vet. Very strange and negligent owners too. Since he was large I am assuming he could not lie down easily in his stall at night so he just stood there until he crashed falling forward. I did see him get down and roll one time when the owner turned him out in the arena. So he could get down to roll. BUT when he got up - he got up like a cow, back end first and not front legs from a sitting position like a horse. So I am assuming his front end was lamer than his hind end. Maybe if he had a large area like the arena to sleep in he would have laid down to sleep. But I never saw him down in the pasture he was turned out in. So they can lie down to roll and not lie down to sleep. I am not sure why as the horse wasn’t talking.
Narcolepsy, which is very rare in horses, is different from falling over due to sleep deprivation.
