Here I am, writing about sleep again. What a cool topic.

You know what’s really cool about writing about sleep? It’s that we’re actually to the point now of *caring* about horses’ sleep. How much sleep they need, how to help them get it, what stops them from getting it, and what happens when they don’t get enough. That means we’ve come a long way in equine welfare awareness, baby.

If you can understand French, have a look at this awesome video, though, from 1971. Already back then, Professor Yves Ruckebusch at the Toulouse Veterinary School was looking into sleep patterns in cows and horses. (Skip to the halfway mark to see the part about horses.) Okay, so I think if this study occurred in 2015, the study horse probably wouldn’t be chained up in a standing stall. Poor guy pulling on his halter during his REM sleep…. But anyway, kudos to Prof. Ruckebusch for this great start looking into equine sleep.

When I was a young horse owner in Texas, people told me horses can’t lie down for long because they need the blood to “bounce” back up from their frogs in the feet. Researchers have now told me that’s probably not true. I’ve also heard–actually in the last year–that only sick horses will lie down. Well, that isn’t true either. Healthy horses will lie down, and they need to lie down, to get their full rest to keep them healthy and ready to perform.

Since looking into horse sleep studies, I’ve been even more careful about bedding in my horses’ shared stall. My two horses are 17 hands each, so according to the welfare laws in Switzerland (the only country I know of that actually specifies legal requirements for horse bedding), I should be giving them 7.5 square meters of bedded lying area each, or 15 square meters for both of them. But since the mare’s very dominant over the gelding, I want to make sure there’s plenty of room, since a new study has shown that lower-ranking horses get more rest if they’re more bedding space. I’ve got 21 square meters of open bedding space in my barn. And when I find wood shavings in my horses’ manes when I wake up in the morning, it makes me a happy horse owner.

How’s your horse’s sleep?

In the riding club where I keep my horses, vaulting is a Big Deal.  That’s because it’s home to the world champion vaulter, Nicolas Andreani, and world champion vaulting horses Idéfix (now retired) and Just A Kiss. About a fourth of the riding horses at this stable also perform vaulting exercises, under individuals, teams, and pas de deux. On Tuesday I got to watch our club’s teams warming up for their French national championships in La Motte, which are going on right now. There were six people on each team–yes, really, six people, though never more than three at a time on the horse. They were taking turns jumping on, doing poses, leaps, and lifts, and jumping off. The smaller members of the team (younger children) were pulled up onto the horse by older vaulters already on the horse. It was quite impressive to watch.

Apparently the FEI is finding it more and more impressive as well. They’ve decided that the acrobatic movements are getting so advanced in the vaulting discipline that it’s time to have a closer look at the equipment used on the horse.

Here’s my article in The Horse about that topic:

FEI Seeks to Improve Vaulting Horse Welfare