LE Animation problem

[icecreamassassin]

So I have a boss battle where a rotating timer cycles every 30 seconds and sets off a magic explosion at an NPC which rings a bunch of loud gong-like chimes which is SUPPOSED to stagger my Falmer boss character. When it happens his invulnerability is shut off and he is supposed to stagger for 10 seconds so you can wail on him. Then after 10 seconds passes, he's made invulnerable again and the stagger ends. I'm having a hard time getting this to happen. Here's the block of code that fires every 20 seconds to start the stagger period:

Event OnUpdate()
        GhostRef.PlaceAtMe(TG08BShockwaveExplosionDBM) ; the NPC that fires the magic blast
        Tulrin2Base.Setinvulnerable(false) ; boss is made vulnerable
        Debug.SendAnimationEvent(TulrinMeleeRef, "StaggerStart")
        Utility.Wait(10)
        Tulrin2Base.Setinvulnerable()
        Debug.SendAnimationEvent(TulrinMeleeRef, "StaggerStop")
        RegisterforSingleUpdate(20)
Endevent

So the blast goes off without a hitch and it re-registers for the update again just fine, but it doesn't stagger him. What am I missing? Thanks.

 

Edit: Just occurred to me, that the animation event should be sent to an actor reference not an objectreference. So I'll test that