Odd neck muscle conformation. Any ideas?

[milliepup]

I have a horse that I have been riding for the past couple of months but when I first rode her she had been used to being very overbent and behind the vertical. I have been schooling her to work longer and lower which she seems to find quite hard and prefers to carry her head and neck higher but does still work from behind. I originally noticed that for about 3 inches behind her ears the muscle seemed to be convex so when she did round up where her neck muscle should have a nice curve this stopped at the previous mentioned spot so ends way before the poll. She can be quite fussy in the mouth and messes about with her head i.e. you ask her to work low and she will fight you to bring her head and neck up.
Any ideas?

 

[Blizzard]

It sounds like she has some tension in her neck, I would recommend getting a chiro/physio to look at her.

I know a horse who had the same problems, and she had trapped a nerve in her neck and was in a lot of pain, hence the behaviour.

 

[hannah87]

it could be just a bulid up of the wrong muscles of her being worked overbent and becos ur now working her properly she is finding it very hard as has the wrong muscles.my gelding has a tendancy to hold his head high, i bought him at the age of 10 and he had never done any work on the bit - so had huge muscles on the underside of the neck and none on his topline , i have spent the last 3 years working him slowly on building up the correct muscles on his neck and he is just about there now.

 

[Orangehorse]

No quite sure what you are describing, but it could be from being ridden in draw reins, which can lead to a "broken neck" - this is when the outline of the neck "breaks" a few inches back from the poll. It is not literally broken of course, but it is undesirable from a dressage point of view. It is quite easy to spot once you have had it pointed out.

Might still be a good idea to get it looked at by a chiropractor anyway.