I just want the animation to play, kind of like a stagger that lasts as long as I want it to.

Debug.SendAnimationEvent(Reference, "BleedOutStart")Debug.SendAnimationEvent(Reference, "BleedOutStop")

What happens when you call that on an actor that has no bleed out animations (like a chicken )?
It will not CTD.... I would hope.

I am looking for some "breath hard" or "out of breath" type animations, I wish they had more "on the ground" animations like bleed out.

I wonder if Dawn Guard will have new ones?

if it doesnt have the animation, it does nothing. i dont even think it dumps an error line in the log either

Talos bless you, my son!

You can also use PlayIdle to force the target into certain animations like Bleedout, but for some reason some non-human actors with bleedout animations (cats, giants, etc) have their bleedout Idles declared separately, so you'd have to have check the race and then play the appropriate Idle. Weird stuff, especially consdering all the warnings in the CK wiki about SendAnimationEvent.

That said, I've used SendAnimationEvent with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngD8dTsdpPM to force actors in and out of Bleedout. If you're applying it as a spell effect or something, though, make sure there is some kind of extra check to make sure the actor doesn't get stuck in the Bleedout animation, because they -will- stay there forever...