The diagnosis...

Shamrock was doing so well I was finally ready to dive in and post on a dressage fb group about Shamrock...this way I could start participating in the group actively.  That's when someone messaged me, asking if I had considered that my horse may have PSSM.

This is what I'd posted:

"While I'm posting...this is my horse...a 7 year old solid bred paint gelding. I've had him for two years and he was a mess when we started. Head flinging and wouldn't accept contact at all. Very bad underneck as well. For the first year I didn't do much with him because I just didn't know what to do. Even trying him in sidereins and longeing didn't make a difference. I worked on massaging and stretching his neck because it seemed as if it was "locked up", he also could reach around very far with it when trying carrot stretches.

He was also *very* spooky and I rode him very defensively...making it much worse.

Then I moved to a different barn where I was able to start taking lessons. I've been taking lessons on him for almost a year and have had a few giant (to me) epiphanies. I haven't been able to ride as regularly as I would have liked, so progress has been slow in coming. I am finally able to ride a lot and have moved my horse to a much nicer barn with a real arena and good footing, which has made a world of difference.

We still have a long way to go, but my lesson Monday was the first lesson that was mostly good with only moments of resistance/unbalancing...before that it was always resisting/unbalanced with moments of good!"

And suddenly, just like that...it was a whole new world...PSSM made perfect sense!