Headshaking advice: What is headshaking?

By Harriet Linton

How to...

06 May 2009 09:58

Picture this: It’s a beautiful, sunny spring day and you decide to go for a hack. Suddenly, your horse starts to act as though a bee has flown up his nose and stung him. He flings his head up and down and throws a front leg out, pawing the ground. You stop and he immediately turns his head and tries to rub it on his side or your leg. What on earth is going on?

The answer is that the horse is exhibiting the classic signs of that perennial problem, headshaking. The odds of a bee actually flying up a horse’s nose are too miniscule to consider, so this behaviour must have been triggered by something else.  And that ‘something else’ is what vets have been researching for years, with varying degrees of success.

So what exactly is headshaking? Vets call it a “hyperreflexic hyperaesthetic disorder” – which, in layman’s terms, means a sensitivity that produces an urgent response.

Professor Knottenbelt thinks this acute sensitivity translates into a nerve-based problem. “I believe it’s centered on the brain stem origin of the main sensory nerve to the face, eye, ear, nose and teeth or mouth,” he explains. “It could be similar to human syndromes characterised by periodic, intermittent or persistent facial pain.”So a good smack is the last thing the headshaking horse needs if he is suffering from a form of neuralgia. And to make it worse, most studies have shown that painkillers have little or no effect on the condition.

If your horse does show headshaking symptoms, your first port of call should be your vet, who will try to identify the trigger factor. To help with this, Professor Knottenbelt suggests keeping an accurate diary of the conditions under which your horse gets better or worse.

Most owners will do anything for their horse and there are several products on the market that claim to help the headshaking horse. The most popular are mesh nose nets and facemasks. No one is sure how these  work because the holes are too big to filter out most pollens or allergens. One suggestion made in a study by Dr Katy Taylor at DeMontfort and Lincoln Universities is that nose nets act as “counter-irritants”.

“This means they cause the nose to itch, distracting the horse, or they may alter the airflow inside the nostrils, thus reducing the irritation caused by particles,” explains Dr Taylor. 

Nose nets are now legal in all types of affiliated competition in Britain, which is good news because the condition affects horses and ponies of every breed and type.

Some horses are photic headshakers, which means the condition is triggered by bright light. If your horse stands with his head facing the corner of his stable and tries to keep out of the light, the chances are he’s a photic headshaker.

For a list of symptoms, click here