So, my problem child older gelding seemed to be having a flare-up of his headshakers last week, but it has since become pretty clear that his issue is not that this go around. Typically with his headshakers, any time you ask for a “frame” (put in quotes because with his OA it’s a very very basic level frame) he’ll toss his nose up like something is zinging him, no matter what’s on his face-nose net, fly bonnet, bit/no bit etc. but this time his symptoms are presenting differently. He is only having issues cantering to the right, not to the left. He’ll throw his head up hard like he’s being zapped somewhere and then he’ll stop completely. He was also jumping hesitantly, overly round and then throwing his head up and stopping on landing. When I tried him in a hackamore rather than his Happy Mouth that he was using, there were no more problems and I was even able to successfully jump him.
So, while I wait on my vet to take a look at him I am looking into some sort of bitless bridle, but I’m not sure what our best choice is. We’ve tried a traditional hackamore as well as a “flower” hackamore that still had a couple of lower holes to put the reins through. The problem is I do need to use an opening rein on occasion, and when I do so the shank will start to flip up. With the flower hackamore, I can put the rein higher up to a different hole but the rein sits kind of awkwardly that way. He seems to do well with the teeny bit of leverage it provides though.
I’ve tried a sidepull/bitless bridle with him before, and he didn’t really respond to it whatsoever. It felt like the equivalent of when a horse is just really hard and unresponsive in the bridle. I rode him in a rope halter as well, but there wasn’t a great spot to put the reins through other than the loops on the bottom which also didn’t provide much steering.
Any thoughts or recommendations?? Please don’t hit me with training advice for getting him to bend more appropriately through my leg or anything like that-he is 18 and just comes out stiff and less responsive to the leg so occasionally it just really helps to gently guide his head around with opening reins a couple of times! We are certainly not aiming to go to Land Rover so I just live with a bit of incorrect riding with him at times to keep him happy.
No disrespect meant and I do appreciate the concern! Just don’t want to turn this into another vet discussion. My vet knows him very very well and with this new development I am of course having him seen right away (well, as quickly as it could be scheduled) and discussing his future under saddle. We have had the discussion about whether he should retire a bunch of times, and up until this point, aside from gradually lowering his workload over the past year or two, vet doesn’t think he needs to fully retire yet. Maybe this time will be the time I make that decision but we’ll have to wait and see. Since this issue popped up the very first time while over a fence (and then continued after), I wanted to try the hackamore over fences too to see if we could replicate the problem at all since he was fine on the flat with it on, but he was fine for it and I haven’t jumped him since.
This is COTH. You can try telling people what to post. And what not to post. But they will post what they want to, anyway. 
. I needed more lateral control than the mechanical offered (like I said, he came STRAIGHT off the track and we were riding in an open 7 acre field or on the trail), but none of the others I tried worked. He was very happy, but a bit of a bull to steer 
. FWIW he’s now in a Myler D level 1 and very content.