Annagain
Well-Known Member
Charlie has a bit of an issue with intermittent head tossing. It seems to be an anxiety / impatience / adrenalin thing more than anything (nose net /seasons made no difference). He'll do it for the last 5 minutes heading home on a hack. This is much improved from as soon as we turn for home / hit half way on a circular route as it used to be. If we box up somewhere new and he doesn't realise he's heading back to the trailer, he doesn't do it. In the school, he was doing well with getting out of the habit but it's started creeping back in recently - although we are asking him to do a bit more now, nothing very advanced, just a bit of lateral work and a bit more collection. Everything else is coming on in leaps and bounds but we just can't crack this issue.
He can go for whole session without doing it, do nothing for ages then start, do it for a few minutes here and there for the whole session or do it fairly persistently and then suddenly stop as if a switch has been flicked. If he's doing poles or jumping and has something to focus on, he doesn't do it. He doesn't do it on the lunge - neither in a cavesson nor his bridle,with or without side reins. It makes no difference whether you have contact or not and he'll do it mostly in walk or trot, but very occasionally in canter. We've tried telling him off and ignoring it and neither makes much difference. He'll just stop when he's ready, sometimes this is after 20 seconds, sometimes 10 minutes.
When he had his saddle issue, we had the the physio out to give him a check over. Everything was fine, back wise but she found his poll was really tight so she worked on it. She gave us carrot stretches to do and and she came back today to do some follow up. This time she did a bit more focused work on his poll and his neck and we found that when she upped the pressure on him in terms of what she was doing he started the head tossing and when he was doing the head tossing, she could feel his nuchal ligament 'twanging'. She thinks there's a bit of a chicken and egg situation going on where he does it as a stress / adrenalin release but that by doing it he causes tightness and pain which causes more stress and the circle continues. She's not sure whether the habit or the pain came first, just that each is now exacerbating the other.
She's coming back in 2 weeks and we have lots of exercises to do in the meantime. We switched him to a Micklem a while ago and it seemed to help but that positive effect seems to have worn off now. We're going to change back to his (normal but padded) bridle to see if just changing the pressure point helps in which case swapping bridles fairly regularly might help but I'm wondering if we might need a much more cut back head piece or a bigger brow band. It doesn't appear tight, but we're willing to try anything.
I'm not really sure what I'm asking but does anybody have any experience or thoughts on it please?
He can go for whole session without doing it, do nothing for ages then start, do it for a few minutes here and there for the whole session or do it fairly persistently and then suddenly stop as if a switch has been flicked. If he's doing poles or jumping and has something to focus on, he doesn't do it. He doesn't do it on the lunge - neither in a cavesson nor his bridle,with or without side reins. It makes no difference whether you have contact or not and he'll do it mostly in walk or trot, but very occasionally in canter. We've tried telling him off and ignoring it and neither makes much difference. He'll just stop when he's ready, sometimes this is after 20 seconds, sometimes 10 minutes.
When he had his saddle issue, we had the the physio out to give him a check over. Everything was fine, back wise but she found his poll was really tight so she worked on it. She gave us carrot stretches to do and and she came back today to do some follow up. This time she did a bit more focused work on his poll and his neck and we found that when she upped the pressure on him in terms of what she was doing he started the head tossing and when he was doing the head tossing, she could feel his nuchal ligament 'twanging'. She thinks there's a bit of a chicken and egg situation going on where he does it as a stress / adrenalin release but that by doing it he causes tightness and pain which causes more stress and the circle continues. She's not sure whether the habit or the pain came first, just that each is now exacerbating the other.
She's coming back in 2 weeks and we have lots of exercises to do in the meantime. We switched him to a Micklem a while ago and it seemed to help but that positive effect seems to have worn off now. We're going to change back to his (normal but padded) bridle to see if just changing the pressure point helps in which case swapping bridles fairly regularly might help but I'm wondering if we might need a much more cut back head piece or a bigger brow band. It doesn't appear tight, but we're willing to try anything.
I'm not really sure what I'm asking but does anybody have any experience or thoughts on it please?
