SARAH: "I'm hoping you can help to shed
some light on a problem I've been coping
with for about six years."
You're a patient woman.
"I have a soon to be 27-year-old Trakehner.
He has a 12 by 12 stall with shavings
and he's turned out for eight hours a day.
He's an alpha personality in his herd.
Here's the problem.
He frequently falls asleep while standing and then nearly
falls down."
I've known horses like this.
"It's very disturbing to see this
and he will do it several times in an hour.
He does this in his stall and during turnout.
He's never done it while under saddle or in cross ties,
so I doubt it's narcolepsy."
Interesting.
"He rolls every single day in the pasture
so I know he's not afraid of getting himself back
to a standing position.
I wonder if this is sleep deprivation?
If so, how can I fix it?
How can I keep him safe?
DR LYDIA GRAY: That's an interesting question.
I've had it before.
I think the first important thing
is to define clearly narcolepsy from sleep deprivation.
Narcolepsy is a chronic, long term, rare,
and most importantly incurable, sleep disorder
of the central nervous system.
And it's characterized by loss of muscle strength and tone
suddenly.
The medical term is cataplexy.
And one thing I learned in researching this one--
I always try to think of ways to say
things that are memorable and easy, like simple.
And so for this one I have "all individuals with narcolepsy
have excessive daytime sleepiness."
SARAH: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: "But not all individuals
with excessive daytime sleepiness have narcolepsy.
OK.
So sleep deprivation, I think a 1/3 of humans have this,
and horses have it too, because they do require REM sleep.
People think, oh, they sleep standing up.
They doze standing up, but they sleep,
the REM sleep that you need to recharge your brain,
has to be laying down.
Now she said she's seen her horse roll,
so he gets down and gets up.
There's four causes of sleep deprivation in horses.
And she described it well.
When he gets he gets drowsy and then he buckles,
a leg buckles and it partially collapses.
And like she said, we've all seen it.
You know, like what's going on?
She has ruled out - one of the causes of sleep deprivation
is pain associated.
It's usually an older horse that can
no longer get down and get back up so they can't sleep anymore.
And after about a week of not sleeping,
you begin to see signs.
And so they sort of get lulled into sleep.
But she noted, it doesn't happen on the cross ties
or when she's grooming or saddling or something.
Or when she is riding, that'd be dangerous.
But a lot of horses, when they're on the cross-ties
and are feeling safe and their owner is rubbing on him,
you know with these gloves, they get drowsy
and they head into the first phase of real sleep.
And then they buckle and they wake themselves up.
It doesn't sound like that's happening with this guy.
So that's the second one is the monotony associated sleep
deprivation.
The one that might be, and again, we always
say talk to your vet because you have
to make sure this isn't true narcolepsy
or that it's not some other condition.
But the one that it sounds like to me
is the dominance associated sleep deprivation.
She said he's an alpha horse.
If he's the alpha horse in a herd, he's in charge.
All the time.
SARAH: And he's 27.
That's exhausting.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It's exhausting.
And he can never completely relax
because who's in charge then?
Who's watching out for the whatever, wolves or bears?
Or I don't know what they have there.
SARAH: Or the extra hay.
Got to keep an eye out for that.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, so in those cases
if that's what it is, what resolves them--
and again, this is how you define that narcolepsy, which
is sometimes treated by drugs but it's incurable.
You can cure sleep deprivation by providing an old cranky
mare.
Because they're in charge, doesn't matter
if you're an alpha gelding.
Old mares are in charge.
And then when she's in charge, he can relax and finally get--
and they only need like an hour or two, maybe three hours,
sleep a day.
Real sleep.
That's my suggestion.
I think she should talk it over to her vet.
The thing I'm not supposed to forget
is that there is a vet who studies this.
He's been studying it for a long time
and he's where I get all my information from.
Dr. Joe Bertone is at the Western University
in one of the new vet schools.
I got an email from him today, because I checked.
He wants to hear about these cases.
He wants people to contact him and tell him his stories.
He may be doing a research project, I don't know.
But he said say his email address
and put it on the screen.
So it's jbertone@westernu.edu.
SARAH: We'll put it right on the screen.
DR LYDIA GRAY: We'll put it on the screen
because I may have messed that up.
It's an ongoing something that's being studied.
It's relatively newly recognized.
We don't have all the facts.
We're piecing it out more and more.
She's clearly done her homework because she knew it's not pain,
it's not this.
It might be that dominance factor.
But talk to Dr. Bertone and I think he might really
be able to help you.
SARAH: Based on how much research she's done
and then that she's submitted the question here,
I feel like you should be honored that you are who people
turn to when Google fails them.
This is very exciting.
This is a prestigious honor.
DR LYDIA GRAY: OK.