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Maybe try to keep working with him, to work out his problems. I follow a horse whisper on YouTube, he has some very good points. This is just my personal option if you give him calming supplements how is he/she ever going to trust you without them. I am not trying to be mean. I just want the horse to be happy. I have also seen supplements on other animals create the animal to be droopy or even drunk looking. It is really quite sad to see. Not quite the answer you were looking for but I hope you have some luck with him.

Check out ConfidenceEQ - my friend works for the company that makes it, and thinks its a pretty good product to refocus horse brains and make them not stress so much.

@Ashadowlegacy awhh poor baby I didn't think it was that bad. It breaks my heart the way bad people treat animals.

Gael, I used the same approach with a lovely buckskin QH mare I rescued years ago. She was beaten and harassed into flipping over under saddle and then beaten again for doing so! It took a good three months before she felt safe enough to actually come to me instead of backing away in fear at any contact. She ended up taking a lot of cues from the other mare I pastured with her who is a total attention hog and FINALLY came around. She was such a sweet girl when she realized not all people are jerks! I found a wonderful home for her where she is a trail horse that does camping trips and has been in numerous parades. She still has some residual issues from her trama, but considering the circumstances, I can't believe how far she has come from those first few weeks of building trust.

I really think the best thing for her was her pasture mate. If you have access to a horse that loves people, I would give that a try. It seemed to build some confidence in her when she saw all the good things her buddy experienced.

He goes out with my sisters horse who is very social. I have never had much problem with him being afraid of me, he loves attention and is like a puppy. He has great ground manners, he's my favorite horse to lead; you can walk him out to pasture with hay in your other arm and he won't even try to touch it. I didn't ride him for some time because I fell off of him a week after having him. During that time I just brushed him and played with him. I've worked with him a lot and he no longer is afraid of most people. It all seems to depend on the person in general. Alfred gets the "he's crazy" "he has no manners" "he's bad", but in all honesty he doesn't act up unless he is scared. He has never offered to buck, and any times he's spooked it's because something actually did scare him. It's hard to explain almost because he can be totally fine with one person and the next person he won't let near him. He has so much potential to be a great hunter/jumper if he could just chill out a little bit. For how hard he tries now, I can't even imagine what he was like before being abused. He learns things so quickly, has voice commands, hardly ever have to touch his mouth, overall I think if he has something to take the edge off for a little while so he can see that nothing will hurt him I'd be able to wean him off of it

Thanks for everyone's help, I'm going to have to try different things. Cool thing about Smartpak, it its one of their brands I can get my money back if it doesn't work. So I suppose I'll start there and see how it goes

Ok, thank you. I'll have to try that too. Willing to try mostly anything right now to find what works.

I actually switched to a new farrier who uses essential oils for different things and he loves them. He normally has melt downs over the farrier. I also put him on Via Calm and he gets that daily and an extra scoop on days where he may get upset like for the farrier or going off property. It keeps him on the mellow side but doesn't make him dopey. So far this seems to be working and it only costs me $10 for a two month supply.