So this is my little guy Mayhem. He’s probably about 12 - 13 years old, and starting about 10 days ago, he developed an issue where something is periodically causing him pain. In the video, you can see him jerk his head back 3 times over the course of about 30 seconds. This is very mild, comparatively. Sometimes, it hurts him so much that he yelps when it hits, and it just makes me feel awful because I don’t know what I can do to help him.

He had a dental a couple months ago, and 4 of his teeth were removed. I suggested to his vet that it might be tooth pain, but he does not believe this to be the case. Mayhem’s gums look good, and he has no problems eating. Also, when he does want to play, his favorite game is “bite the shit out of the human’s hand”, and doing so doesn’t cause him to jerk or yelp in pain, so I don’t think it’s a tooth ache.

One suggestion the vet had is that it could be a pinched nerve. He gave Mayhem some muscle relaxers, but these did not have any effect on him; he still had the periodic pain at roughly the same frequency and intensity. The next step according to the vet is to do an MRI, but that’s going to be about $3000 - $4000, and might not find anything useful. If it’s absolutely necessary, I’ll find a way to make it happen, but that’s going to be quite a struggle for me, so I’m looking for other things I can try to troubleshoot what’s going wrong with him.

I know that this is a bit of a long-shot, but if anybody here has experienced a similar issue with their little guy, or has experience as a vet and can offer suggestions for things to check or medications to try, I would be grateful.