Pony's clicky neck.

Toast

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Our little welsh x mare has moved to the stud where i work so a friend of mine can school her. Upon riding her last night she told me that she was very stiff on her left side and struggled bending right. (i would ride her myself but shes my sisters pony and im too heavy)

She is a rescue pony who has an issue with her back feet, we cannot have these trimmed by a farrier without serious fisticuffs between pony and farrier. But more recently watching her its become apparent that she almost cant keep them up once you have hold of them, not that shes scared. Moreso the left foot than the right...see where im going?

Unfortunately since shes a rescue pony we dont know exactly whats happened to her, all we know is that she has been severely beaten and starved in the past. Which reflects in her behaviour with various things which is to be expected. But shes 100 times better than when we first bought her.

Last night after riding her we did a few carrot stretches with her, she found bending to the left easy peasy, between the legs were no problem but bending right we couldnt do, and when we finally did there was an almighty click in her neck region. I gather that theres some issue here but i just wondered what others thought about it? Shes done her carrot stretches again tonight with exactly the same result, easy on the left and between legs, struggled with the right and then the click.

We will be having the physio out to her, so im merely pondering as i know a lot of you on here have much useful information :)

Any thoughts as to what it could be and how i could help her would be appreciated in the meantime though!

xx
 
Physio is the best plan but as you probably think already, I would suspect that the issue is going through her back and is probably the cause of the back leg issue.
 
Hopefully physio will be able to get to the bottom of it for you. My pony last year had an incident in the field with another gelding and wrenched his neck. Seemed fine until I rode him and then in trot would hold his head on a slight angle out to the left and if I tried to straighten him or flex him to the right he'd feel very odd behind. I got the physio and his poll was out so she did whatever they do and it was sorted. I just wonder if the back leg issue is stemming from maybe discomfort in her neck. Also when my pony in the past has once shown reluctance to keep up a back leg when picking out his feet that turned out to be a back muscle problem and was sorted easily with physio so I hope your problem is as easily resolved. Glad she's in good hands now with you.
 
Its interesting you say that, she tends to hold her head to one side in trot quite often and then when asked to straighen it she looks unsound..... definitely a physio job then!!!
x
 
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