27/07/2022
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I really wanted to share this success story with you - it may help others and this is not the first time that I have come across horses that have moved location and their headshaking seems to have disappeared!
A massive thank you to Jane for sending us her story, I am so happy for you and your beautiful horse ❤️
“Here is the story of Jupe.
And, just like that, it was gone. I noticed pretty quickly that I wasn’t waiting for it either. That violent head bob that you hope, pray is a normal reaction to flies or something but deep down, in your gut, you know that it isn’t. It is something much more awful and how big or disastrous it gets seems to be in the lap of the gods. But, six weeks on, in the height of head shaking season, it was gone. Two hour hill rides were once again possible. I had to pinch myself to make sure it was true. Five long years of searching for an answer, a cause, a cure, anything to have my beloved, feisty boy back had come to an end yet I’m still none the wiser.
As a seven year old Arab x Lusitano gelding, Jupiter had developed head shaking out of no where for no apparent reason in the summer of 2017. It only took a couple of rides before I knew something was really wrong. I tried again and again in different weather conditions at different times of the day but the violent dip of his nose and tilting his head to the side told me that he was really uncomfortable. I had had him since he was 18 months old. I had lovingly backed and trained him intent on taking up the new wave of Cowboy Dressage (western / classical sometimes with obstacles) but Jupe much preferred going quicker, preferably over hills. My trimmer convinced me to give endurance a try and so we did. Completing Our BTF (qualification up to 50km) in our first year we had our eyes set on the next level (2 x 60km and an 80km within certain speeds, sound and with a good heart rate). These aspirations all turned to dust in front of my eyes and all that I wanted was my horse back. I made promises to the universe that if I could just hack him out without him being distressed, so clearly uncomfortable or worse, in abject pain, I would be happy.
But no amount of negotiating with fate did any good. Things went from bad to worse and in 2018 I was regularly walking home from hacks. The worst was perhaps witnessed by my husband who was with us for a quiet ride. About an hour in strolling through the countryside Jupe stopped dead in his tracks, gazed into space and seemingly seeing an apocalypse that I was completely unaware of sweated up to a froth within minutes. His eyes were popping out of his head as he violently began striking at his face with his own front hooves. By this time I was off walking beside him, trying to soothe him in anyway I could. He pushed the end of his nose onto my hand leading him and kept it there. We slowly walked like that all the way home, me in tears, Jupe nose against my hand with a very anxious look in his eye.
And so the research began. Systematically trying to rule things out, add supplements in, put on masks, take off nose nets, round and round we went for several years until I just couldn’t do it any more. Occasionally it was possible to ride him in the autumn and winter months but living in the Scottish low land hills meant that these were often months where tracks turned to bottomless mud pits and you wouldn’t dare ride around farmland on such wet ground. Jupe did not enjoy being a field ornament, always busy, always eager to do something. We resorted to walks out in hand to try to keep life interesting but eventually this too became problematic. In his worst months the horse that I could normally lead, play and trailer load at liberty became down right dangerous on a lead rope.
My vet had been involved all along and when Jupe began to headshake in the field at home, rubbing his nose and face against things, occasionally cutting himself, I decided enough was enough.I really thought it was time to say goodbye to my darling boy. In addition, pressure was mounting as my husband and I had decided to make the move abroad that Covid had scuppered two years previously. I knew there was no way I could move a sick horse 600 miles only to be in the same situation in a foreign country and without my own trusty vet who was so tolerant of my endless requests to look into research papers and medications.If I was to lose Jupe it would be in the hands of my own vet, at home, in peace.
My vet was booked to come the following week. I could barely look at Jupe but I spent time each day with him, just in the field, hanging out together. Two days before my vet was due I was sitting on a log in Jupe’s field. He walked up and started to nudge me, clearly wanting something. We had done a tonne of liberty work in our time together and he began playing with a trotting pole that was on the ground. He literally, of his own volition, went to the pole and did a sideways move over it and the looked to me for payment ( a treat of course, always in my pockets, disastrous to my washing machine) We played for 15 mins or so, I believe we both got something from it.For me it was a rush of shear and utter bloody mindedness! I marched back into the house and pleaded with my scientist husband to rake through all the newest research we could find on Trigeminal neuralgia in both horses and humans.
Meanwhile I contacted Emily of Shakease as I had already tried the Shakease nose net but very unfortunately it hadn’t worked in our case. But Emily had been so helpful, so empathetic and genuinely interested in our outcome and clearly and expert in the area I had to ask her if she felt there was anything else I could do. Through messages we went through what had been done to date, the thing that she suggested was missing from my list; move location. It had worked in a handful of horses according to Emily. Moving Jupe from our home to somewhere else could be an answer? It tied in perfectly with our situation of moving permanently to France but would it work and how could I convince my husband that taking Jupe with us was a good move?
In the background, my wonderful husband, Duncan, had tracked down new research in both horses and humans that showed that sucrose seemed to trigger the sensitisation of the Trigeminal nerve. Grass! I started to keep Jupe on a very bare paddock and dry yard with hay. It was May and we were running out of time. Our house was now sold and our move date of August was looming. I watched the laminitis app like a hawk and any movement towards amber or red I pulled Jupe in so that he was only in the yard on hay, much to his disgust. However he was OK in the field. I began playing on the ground with him, some days were good, some days were not so good.
Hope rising in my belly I called my own vet, whom I had been a client of so long I didn’t mind asking him to take a field livery on his hillside home where the vet practice operated from and there were dozens of horses were on retirement livery or recuperating from procedures.
We moved Jupiter 25 miles and closer to the coast. My vet encouraged me to go over and ride Jupe and even offered his own daily rider to ride for me seeing as I was now literally surrounded by packing boxes. I suspect he knew that I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer. What if nothing had changed?
On the 12th July 2022 I rode Jupiter up into the Lammermuir hills. It was a bright and sunny day but with a strong breeze. Moorland birds flitted in the grass and the odd hare darted across the moorland in front of us. Normally this would have been enough to set the head shaking off after 15 mins of riding. But that day, as soon as I sat in the saddle I knew he was going to be OK. As we ambled along the happy natural bob of his head was a wonderful sight. I tried not to get too excited but vowed to ride within a few days to test these amazing results. On our second ride we were out for over 2 hours, riding at all paces. There were horse flies and midges, pollen, cut hay, grass but not so much as nod. I wasn’t sure wether to laugh or cry. Five long emotional years seemed to dissipate into the ether and here I found myself, and my horse just doing our thing once more.
With heartfelt thanks to Emily of Shakease, Colin Tait of Equitait, friends and family who accepted my obsessive mission, Duncan my husband who was mad enough to join me on the obsessive mission but mostly to Jupiter who had the strength to hang in there and somehow find his way back to me.”
