Is this a Headshaker?

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BonneMaman

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My friend's pony filly (3yo) has started to nod her head (downwards and jerky) but does not try to rub her nose on the floor. She is also hyper sensitive to anything fiddling with her whiskers.

She tried to trim her throat and chin whiskers with hand held clippers the other day and she started to strike out with front hooves and then progress to rearing.

She is normally a good pony albeit a bit sparky in herself but my friend has broken her and her son rides her round the field gently with no issues.

Do you think the issues might be related?

Any advice?

She tried twitching but it had little effect!
 
I most certainly wouldnt be twitching a hose with a sensitive face....what a way just to make it worse .....:/

Headshaking itself could be due a million things, nobody knows why some horsesdo it. I would get a vet out to check everything else is ok like teeth etc. Our old headshaker would do it in the field, when he was stood, tied up, if some dust used to come out of the hay he would go in to a frenzy. We thought dust allergy, but got that proved wrong. Could be a form of hayfever, could be irritation at flies...

A headshaker will be worse, usually, in bright sunshine, if you have a hot sunny day and the pony is worse, thats never a good sign.

Maybe try a nose net? If yu have the vet out, and the vet thinks theyre a headshaker, they can write it in your passport so that when you go to shows you can wear the nosenet.

Good luck, but rule everything else out before coming to the headshaking diagnosis!!!
 
This could be trigeminal neuralgia. Nerve pain in the trigeminal nerve of the face, I had to have a 3yr old pts with this.
Symptoms - twitching head (as if a fly has gone up the nose), striking at face, head pressing on the ground, throwing head about. Can be set off by things passing the eyes (like blowing chaff/snow/blowing hay). Mine was very difficult to put a headcollar on as she jerked her head around when you put anything up to her nose. She also had an overdeveloped muscle under the neck from a very young age with the frequent head throwing.
In humans this is an extremely painful condition (which can cause suffers to commit suicide).
You should video the behaviour and show it to your vet.

Please don't twitch this pony or punish the behaviour, a sufferer can't help it.
 
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