Sleeping Horses

One of the things that was the easiest for me to observe when I was living in the field for four days was the sleeping patterns of Pollyanne and Hazel.  I was probably particularly interested in this because it presented an opportunity for me to sleep, although many times I was so busy taking photos or writing down times I forgot to actually sleep. To set the scene Hazel is a pretty healthy horse with no obvious health problems and Pollyanne is quite the opposite.  She has many aches and pains, suffers a lot more from the cold and does not seem to be able to lie down properly. So there were plenty of differences between the two.

The first thing that I learned was that they slept for an average of 5 hours and 20 minutes over each 24hour period.  When I say slept I am including snoozing and deeper sleeping into this.   However the amount of time they slept in each day was quite different and seemed to be affected by the weather.  The shortest amount of sleep they had in 24hours was 3hr 30mins and the longest was 7hrs 44mins.   The longer sleeping times seemed to correspond to days when there was wetter weather.   And when they slept longer they did most of it at night time between about midnight and 5 am.  On the days when the weather was good there was no particular tendency to sleep more at night time. Overall Hazel and Pollyanne tended to sleep at least every 3 hours.

For most of the sleeping sessions the girls would sleep together.  As one started to snooze the other would join

Hazel in her tango pose

in usually within a few minutes, but sometimes it might take a bit longer.  However there were a couple of times when Pollyanne decided that she was having extra sleep due to heavy rain and then the two girls would be out of kilter with each other for a few sleeps and not end up sleeping at the same time for a while.  It seemed to work itself out though, so the general preference was always to revert to sleeping together.

When Hazel and Pollyanne slept they would be much closer to each other than when they were eating.  Typically they would stand with about 2 or 3 metres.  Where as when they were grazing they could be anything up to 70 metres away and rarely closer than 5.  They definitely had favourite spots to sleep in.  During the day there were two exact spots that they would go back to and both were up against the hedges.  At night time they were more enclined to go into the added on gravel area at the top of the field which is very sheltered. And overall the spots seemed to correspond also with areas of bare, dry soil.  I am certain that one of these was as a result of constant rolling in that spot.

They did sleep with their backs to the hedges some times but certainly not all the time.  Sometimes they faced each other and other times they looked the same way.  They stood parallel to the hedging and sometimes faced it but this was less frequent.

What surprised me most was the amount of time that Hazel spend sitting down.  I haven’t counted up the times exactly but she probably spent on average 2.5 hours sitting down on any one day.  During this sitting down time she definitely started to dream, her muzzle twitched, her ears rotated around quickly, her head swayed as she rest her nose on the ground and her legs twitched.  She sometimes “talked” in her sleep, uttering faint whinnies or other sounds.  And a slightly odd thing was that she tended to dream with her eyes open.  Inside their sockets her eyes would dart all over the place betraying a fast moving dream, but the lids were mostly open.  Pollyanne dreamed too but this was generally when she stood up as she couldn’t sit down comfortably.  So she would start to dream and in the process would start to fall over.  It seems that if you are dreaming you should be lying down.  Pollyanne also talked in her sleep and whinnied very loudly in her sleep at one point, startling herself and Hazel in the process.  Who knows what she was living through in her mind at that moment.

Over the whole 4 days I only saw Hazel lie down fully on three occasions.  These only lasted about 2 or 3 minutes and when she was lying down she was going full pelt in dream land.  I was seriously expecting her to take off at a horizontal run at one point.  The slightest sound made her jump up and resume her sitting pose which seemed to be less affected by strange noises.  Pollyanne only lay down fully for about 10seconds over the whole 4 days and like Hazel she was going for it in her dreams.

All the time that Hazel and Pollyanne slept they were fully aware of the flies that landed on them, and twitched them off even in their deepest of sleeps.

On waking Hazel would nearly always have a roll, get up and shake.  Whereas Pollyanne would just to the shake thing.  There was obviously lots of licking and chewing afterwards accompanied by yawns and stretches galore.  While I was there I observed several stretches that I had not seen before but I only managed to capture one.  Pollyanne would always, stick one back leg right out behind her in the air, arch her head towards her chest and suddenly transform into something akin a muscular tango dancer.  She would utterly transform and seemed like a different horse.  Hazel would often just to the arching of her head to her chest, along with the general sudden shape transformation, but sometimes she would stretch her head right down the to ground and to her own version of the tango leg pose.

There is probably a lot more to be learned about their sleeping habits and it how is changes over the seasons and other weather patterns.  As a result of seeing how severe Pollyanne’s inability to sleep properly we are making a very special effort to help her out and will be trying to alleviate any pains or fears that she may have.  It cannot be good for her to never get the deep sleep that she desperately needs.  It is a bit of a catch 22 situation.  If she is to heal she needs to sleep, but she needs to heal in order to sleep.  If you have any ideas on how Pollyanne can be helped be sure and leave a comment here.  I sure she will appreciate it

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