Very strange head shaking / nostril issue.

grhands

grhands

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On 5th May at a dressage clinic I first noticed that my horse was shaking his head. It seemed to happen over night, he had always been quite quiet and consistent in his contact up until that point. Things had been going really well and I was excited about how things were going. That day was quiet warm. The clinic was on our yard and we opened the back window as he likes to look out over the fields of oilseed rape (may be relevant)? Anyway during our session I noticed that he had a few quite large (50p sized) lumps on his neck that had gone down by the next day.

He has had the odd head shake during schooling, Friday was pretty bad so I gave him the weekend off. Anyway today things progressed to a whole different level. I took him out for a lunge and he went ballistic. My usually quiet angelic horse was obviously stressed, throwing his head every which way, leaping about, running, sticking his nose in to the surface of the school. After getting him to settle I took him in and asked my friend (and trainer) for her advice. Anyway she popped a loose pressure head-collar / slip on him and we took him out. When she was lunging him I could see from my angle that there was an obvious irregularity with his nostril flare. One nostril was flared as you would expect when working a horse however the other nostril seemed to be almost closed shut. As I mentioned, I have had my boy since january and never noticed this before or any behavior like this. I thought maybe it was something to do with the huge field of oilseed rape right next door? It almost seemed like there was some kind of paralysis in the muscle that would otherwise open the nostril.

He has always been a 'blowy' horse, even down to snoring when he dozes however he was fully five stage vetted, bloods were done and I was completely reassured that this was not a problem and he was vetted for the purpose of affiliated dressage, to hopefully a high level.

Anyway here are some photo's. The difference is not too apparent here but still noticeable.

http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h151/grhands/Nose/

IMG_2598.jpg


Any ideas?? Thanks if you can help in advance
 
I hope that helps. I ordered an equilibrium one that should arrive imminently. Hopefully it will make a difference as he went ballistic as soon as his feet touched the arena yesterday to be honest
 
The left hand side ( thats as i'm looking at the photo so really his right nostril ) looks more fleshy , like it could be swollen just on the outer edge of the nostril , has he been rubbibg it? I suppose it's possible that he could have been stung up there , but i know there are some pretty hefty nerves running up the insde of the nostrils and face generally, hopefully the vet will shed some light. My boy gets a sort of head tic , which seems to have gone ATM but was really bad in the early spring when the trees were just coming into leaf and the spring flowers were up! Good luck , i'm sure a nose net will help.
 
i hope so, as opposed to it being anything nervous as I didn't like the way his nostril was clamped shut! Still no closer to the cause as the vet got stuck with several severe cases of colic today so didn't make it to us
 
I owned a head shaker and his shaking always peaked aroung this time and the nosenet helped very much. But i think his nostril does look swollen and a bit pink? Would be interesting to hear what the vet said.

Good luck with this!
 
We have a lot of fields with oil seed rape around us this year and it is making plenty of people feel wheezy and I hate the smell so it's not unexpected that horses are suffering too. Hope yours improves soon
 
Well my vet seemed to think I should try management such as nose nets and riding during the evenings and basically just to test the water over the next couple of weeks, see if I can pinpoint any real trigger factors.

However despite the correlation to the oilseed rape flowering this head-shaking all seems to interlink to the point where he really started to properly work through his poll. So bearing in mind that his poll was recently realigned after many years of misalignment I'm getting the osteopath in again on Tuesday. My excellent 'people' osteopath also seems to think that human trigeminal neuralgia is also helped with manipulation so why not equine? Worth a shot. It's going to be a long road but I like this boyo a lot and we've come along way in a short time despite this so lets see what we can do!!
 
At least you know what it is now and have a few strategies to try and deal with it. It must be driving him nuts, poor boy. what about some of the bach remedies, might be worth having a look at homeopathic stuff. x
 
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