I second this.
These exercises trigger the use of the postural muscles which allows for greater relaxation in movement, which can help reduce anxiety.
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Ok. Sounds like there’s no one else to do this. You have to be her boss mare, which means you need to respect her feelings, BUT have the final say. Think as a parent - at some point, they have to look to you to be The One. Which means you have to work through some stuff and not be scared of her reactions.
This is a hard thing for an ammy, especially without trainer back up. You need to start expecting that she stands for handling, and enforce that expectation - be firm, but kind. You can’t get caught up in what she’s feeling; you need to remain calm while reacting to what she’s doing. Standing in crossties quietly is a good place to start. Reward her when she shows an instant of relaxation, and (most crucially) remain relaxed yourself. It takes as long as it takes. If you spend all day getting a minute of stillness in the crossties (or the next thing, or the next), that’s how long it takes, and then you stop for the day.
But this all begins with you. You need to discipline yourself to be aware of when your energy starts to spiral, and to be able to reset. Your mare will (eventually) notice and respect your calm.
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I agree generally but I would start with standing in an arena or pen. Have horse loose in halter and later no halter. Ask her to stand then stand while you back away walk away walk around her. Add a whistle to come and do that before she starts moving on her own accord. Treat to come is good. Putting her back in place with one finger on her chest is good if she moves. Do this with no agenda and horse loose so there is nothing to fight or toss around. Just stand and wait for me. Then come to me when I ask. Then stand and wait again. It’s very simple, it doesn’t require any skills, it focuses on you, it creates calm. They get the game really fast. Just make sure to set her up for success. Whistle before she starts following you.
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No one has mentioned feed in this discussion so far. Obviously, you have been consulting vet and feed company but it might be worth doing so again. Getting the right balance of nutrition can be very time consuming but also a very effective way to manage a stressful horse.
When you board a horse, what happens during those times when you are not there is very significant. You are working hard with this mare to promote a calm, relaxed relationship but it sounds like at least ONE groom in the barn is a total a$$ and may be handling her very roughly and undoing everything you are trying to build. Changing feed without consultation or permission is absolutely unforgivable and IMO the BO should have fired that groom. Talk to the BO and perhaps ask that your mare is assigned one quiet, kind groom who will assist in working through these problems.
This is still a very new relationship. Horses, particularly reactive ones, take time to process and settle. Who knows what her past experience has been. Time. More time. Steady routine, same people. Time.
I know of one old boy who had been on the same yard with the same people for many years. He was moved, together with a couple of his friends to a new barn a short distance away. Same routine, same people, same friends but a new location and they nearly lost him to colic in the first week . Now, he is happy as Larry but it took time.
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One more way to help your horse learn the ropes is another horse.
Do you have access to some nice, quiet horse that you can “borrow” and groom by her, pony her with just walking around, become a mentor to her?
When we had horses that acted like yours we kind of ignored them when they were losing it and after a bit they started realizing there was nothing to fret about.
If they ran around or balked, we waited them out and tried again, as many times as it took and they eventually started listening and we tried to go on again, and again, and …
Initially much of the work with them in all situations was wait the horse up and they learned that we would just wait until they listened, so they started paying attention and listening to us, so we could get on with whatever we were doing.
Such horses are smart, once they start to learn they catch on so fast, we had to slow down so we didn’t go too fast and started them fretting again.
One such OTTappendix we had spent one cattle drive rearing so high a cowboy ahead told me that every time he looked back, he could see that horse waving at him over the brush. 
By the time we got to the pens with the cattle, horse had realized no one was paying attention to his meltdowns and started looking around and had put his head down and was walking like a gentleman.
Once tied with other horses while we worked cattle on foot, he again started his dancing around, for some minutes, eventually decided maybe just to watch and after a while he was standing there relaxed more than fretting.
You don’t seem to have a situation where your horse has more to do than at human slow pace move around, being led, being longed, being ridden and then put away.
That will make getting this horse comfortable with everything a longer process.
I think once she cools down and you both have some good communication most of the time, you will love a horse like she is, they really make good partners.
The older fellow that bought that one horse in my story could not say enough about how wonderful a horse he made for him, for many years, they both loved working with each other.
You probably have tried waiting her out already, but have you tried it long enough and with at times another horse helping?
Are you working her in lessons with more than one other horse?
Let us know what you try and how things work out, your mare sounds like an interesting project.
Thank you for letting us be part of it. 
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All the training stuff is good. I’m not dissing any of that info at all, but even though I haven’t totally read this whole thread, I ran a quick search and didn’t find anything about diet, nor lavender.
My mare was like yours, years ago. She’s ASB and when I got her, she was basically a hot mess.
First, for you and your own mindset, I advise learning to meditate. Meditation is a skill you can learn, just like anything else. I’ve found that when I move my brain into that “meditative mindset”, then anything I have going on will not move to her.
Sometimes I think horses can read EEG’s in real time. /s
Now the horse.
For particular stressful situations, lavender essential oil has helped my hot mare and you can find articles on this in the The Horse magazine. Science is proving that this will lower the horse’s heart rate. As needed, I put some on my hand and swipe it on her nose, give her about 15 minutes or so for it to kick in.
Also, in general, I think there are small dietary things that sometimes get missed. I have a book called Feed Your Horse Like a Horse,
That book looks expensive, but it’s worth every penny. There is info in there to help you feed some of the nutrients/micronutrients that can help your horse not be quite so flighty.
A commercial feed I’ve used to help this is Tribute Calm N Easy. I’m not in a regular area to buy this, so I get it from Chewy.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s still forward. I still need to remind her that she does not lead ME! LOL, but that hot emotional weirdness isn’t so bad anymore.
YMMV
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I haven’t read the whole thread, but if she’s a relatively young TB (<6 or 7) she could be microchipped and not tattooed.
You have quite a challenge here as the horse appears to be reactive by nature and you’ve not had experience with a green, reactive horse before.
This horse may not be a TB, but I’ve started several OTTBs off the track and my best one, who I foxhunted first flight for 12 years, was a nervous wreck when I got him. He was very sensitive and was always watching to see if there was something he should be worried about. He was adopted once, but the woman was afraid of him (he had a big motor) and her nerves played into his anxiety.
When I first got him, I spent a couple of months working with him on the ground, including hand walking him on trails. When I first got on him, I had someone lead him until he relaxed. Then we walked, walked and walked some more. He would get quite amped if we did more and I finally just let him bounce around for the first 10-15 minutes, mostly at a canter and ignored his behavior. Eventually he would start to breathe (I swear he held his breath) and relax. But key was to not feed into his anxieties, which can be a daunting. I never thought he’d try to get me off, he was a kind horse. He just needed to learn to relax and trust that I was the alpha horse.
Groundwork sounds like a great place for you to start. If someone can teach you to long line, even better. Get your mare listening to you. Praise her for small successes and only increase the difficulty of a lesson when you are sure she is calm and comfortable with what you are asking.
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YES about the walking. Round pen is also a good place for this. On lead, not off, with flag.
Many of these hot horses have been put in the round pen and made to just run, run, run. This may tire the horse but it won’t calm them down. Teaching my mare to walk. walk. walk. in the round pen has been a big help.
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I’ve been quoted on a different COTH thread! Achievement unlocked! 
@hemitheconyxcaudicinctus, I feel you. For the past year+, I’ve been working with a terrific little Arab who spent the last several years without having “his person,” let alone a consistent program of work. For the smart, sensitive ones, this physical, mental, and emotional atrophy is especially tough. (My lease was — and still is — physically cared for like a prince. But he wasn’t ridden/puttered with on a regular basis, and it showed. On the ground, his feet were never still. In the saddle… come to think of it, his feet were never still then either. Plus the signature Arab Teleportation Spooks, where nothing was still for .25 really exciting seconds at a time.
It sounds like your mare is dying to connect with you and be reassured that this new normal is going to continue. What worked well for me was lots of quiet chatter on the ground and in the saddle, changing my tone to calmly but firmly correct, then going right back to my default shiny/happy chitchat.
Keep giving lots of praise, so she knows what you’re looking for. That will help with the “Is this right? How bout now? And now? And now?” flavor of anxiety. So break mounting into 1,000 tiny pieces: Walk up to mounting block. Stand while you pull down one stirrup. Stand for the other. Stand while you step up on the block. Stand for a split second after you get on. Praise and pats at each step, or each honest attempt at a step, then gradually lengthen all those moments. Rinse and repeat with your other asks. I’ve never done clicker training, but I think proving that clear feedback would be ideal for her.
Also, make yourself the dispenser of good things (the “good” patches of grass, attentive scritches, interesting walks) and a reliable listener. Does she have sensitive areas during grooming? Change spots at the first ear flick, rather than waiting until the dancing starts. When she spots potential monster lairs around the farm, let her stop and look without hassle. Then praise her bravery for taking on that horse-eating woodpile, because she has clearly saved you both from sudden, gruesome death.
Know that building your relationship will take more time than you think — 6 mos. to lay a good foundation, another 6 mos. to see things really shaping up. My motto is “make haste slowly.” Which is often frustrating in the moment. But very satisfying when I can step back and see how those moments eventually string together. Good luck!
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Yes!
When I returned to riding at a h/j lesson barn, the pragmatic nature of groom, tack, ride, cool out, turn out, left little room for doing much with the various little observations I had about the horses and it seemed silly to talk about them.
When I got care of my own horse at another barn I let my inner tween girl run loose observing everything and hanging out in turnout. After a few years I got into both clicker training and Western obstacle groundwork, and it turned out this minute fascinated observation of tiny details was the foundation for good feel and timing. The non structured time is so important.
So is having a routine. I have a definite routine at the mounting block that doesn’t vary because it makes sense in my setup. I also make sure to walk every horse up to the block in a way that guarantees they will arrive straight, it’s a pet peeve to me when people lead their horses up crooked and then fuss. And I started giving her a treat to make her stand and wait rather than march off.
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Wait— are there harness horses at your facility? Has she ever been around driving equipment and horses under harness before? If not, this could be a major player in her behavior changes. A sensitive, hyper aware mare could absolutely melt down when faced with driven horses and carts as they are strange and alarming to horses who’ve never experienced them before. Just another factor to consider since her behavior has changed so radically from sales barn to your barn situation.
How does she react to them??
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Initially she found them quite alarming, but after two months of exposure she doesn’t melt down (or shut down) in the slightest and is okay with them. She came from KY so I doubt she’s ever been around them before but as of two days ago she actually wants to get closer to check them out when they’re running on the track and will let them go right past her without any anxious body language etc. I think it helps that they get run every day, often early in the afternoon while she is at grass, and a stretch of the track passes by her paddock so she’s had the chance to watch them while controlling how far away from them she is for the past 2 months. If we’re walking to the arena and she wants to stop to watch them I let her as opposed to forcing her to get closer etc; she’s not yet indifferent so much as she is vaguely inquisitive. The behavior I’m describing largely happens when nobody’s out or on the track because BO and I’s working schedule doesn’t always overlap.
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That’s my worst fear. I come every day and I bring her inside, but ideally I’d be there to lead her into her paddock in the morning too just to make sure this freak stays far, far away from her. Given that the feed changing groom was also the one who told me to punish her for spooking by snapping the lead rope, I DO worry about what might happen if this clown is the one leading her to her paddock in the morning. Unfortunately it’s not possible to ask one person be assigned to her because there are a LOT of different people in circulation, but the only point of contact with her as far as I know is her walk to be turned out in the morning after she gets fed so I guess that’s better than it COULD be but still is not great.
I’ve crunched the numbers for her feed and once she’s fully transitioned to Fibermax I’m hoping I’ll start to see some changes. The feed that the groom decided to change her to is Omolene 200, which is both what BO feeds the racehorses and, as I understand it, a sweetfeed, so I’m wondering if that may have played a role.
To be honest I’m not scared of her reactions - she’s not explosive or particularly dangerous (any more than any given horse is, at least) - so much as I just wish they didn’t happen.
Right now one of our things is clicker training in the crossties and I have seen results. If she manages to stand still in the middle of the aisle for a few seconds without pawing or swinging her hindquarters in any given direction she gets a click. Same with maintaining a neutral non-pawing pose while I put her saddle pad on, tighten the girth, etc. While she still has her issues standing still on the crossties, I should specify/should have noted in my original post that she’s already come leaps and bounds from where she started. Now sometimes on our really good days I will get a full minute or two of her being normal and neutral in the ties, which was absolutely impossible for her when she first landed. She’s an incredibly smart horse and figured out target training in two short training sessions, it’s just a matter of her grappling between her training and her anxiety, I think.
That said, still looking for any advice on it because while she’s standing mellow because she knows that’s what’s being asked of her during our training sessions, I wish I could make her feel better so that internally she wasn’t feeling the stress/anxiety that makes her want to paw or weave to begin with.
You’ve gotten lots of great advice on this thread so far, and I don’t have a lot to add in terms of horse training advice.
Probably not necessary to say at this point, but this is not the first horse I would wish for you. Or for anyone as a first horse.
However, it’s quite clear to me that you are determined to do right by her.
All that said, what I would wish for you is some time on a made horse to work on you. I heard clearly that you do not have unlimited finances, but it is hard, if not impossible, to work on your own equitation and horsemanship while simultaneously working on a nervous horse.
See if you can squeeze in some lessons where you just work on you. Then you’ll be much better able to help your horse.
All the best, and please post frequent updates.
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Yeah, it’s been a whole… everything, really. I’m one of those people who obsess over every little detail of a decision, read like 45 books over how to correctly make the decision, etc - I did everything I felt I could do to avoid a situation like this specific situation, even shelled out almost 500 bucks for a blood test to make sure that she didn’t just seem calm because she was drugged or given painkillers, so it definitely stings that it turned out the way it did anyway. There have definitely been tears. At the 2 month mark now though I’m mostly just at the point of acceptance - it’s not the first horse experience I wanted but I would rather have her than no horse, and she’s genuinely a very good girl even if she has her issues - she’s smart, very gentle and sweet, a gorgeous mover, and assembled really really well for what I want to do with her, at least in my/my trainer’s opinion. She’s better with the vet and farrier than any horse I’ve ever seen or known, and super willing, and her sillygirl moments make me laugh.
Now I kind of feel like I have huge shoes to fill whether I like it or not although at least I’m not doing it alone - if I didn’t have a trainer/knowledgeable BO/others in my immediate circle it’d be pretty much out of the question. Right now it feels hard and kind of overwhelming but not impossible, at least.
I’m very lucky in that I have continued with my regular lessons on others’ horses, which was definitely the right call to make. Even for fitness reasons, it’s good to be able to trot laps on a horse when I can usually only get a few strides out of my own horse (and am probably now going to step her back to just walking).
Will definitely be posting frequent updates. As of today she is still balking really badly but after about 20 mins of taking it at her pace we did get into the arena, where she was incredibly brave about big heavy chunks of ice sliding/falling off the metal roof. It’s the perfect example of what I mean about her being brave but nervous-natured - she’s much less reactive to that than the other horses I ride (it’s universal in New England right now, and we just had a HUGE snow so there are cinderblock sized piles sliding and thunking on the rooves rn), but can be anxious in general. Yesterday she was very interested in the standies going by with their carts and actively approached them until she was about 20ft away from the track, which was the closest she’s ever gotten to them and was done wholly willingly and on her whim. Very proud of her for that!
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I would subscribe to Warwick Schiller’s online training and video library for this horse. Lots of content on anxious horses and those who rush under saddle.
And I would not engage with the one barn worker. Screaming at a worker is a great way to get kicked out of the barn, no matter how big the screwup by the worker. Go to the manager with your problems.
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Has she had ever seen snow before?
To be clear I didn’t scream at her/raise my voice or say anything that could be construed as a personal attack or not about the crux of the matter- I am upfront but frankly hate conflict. I quite simply very directly told her that she crossed some major boundaries, that this is my horse and as the owner what she is fed is my decision, and not to ever do something like that again, especially because I’m working with a vet on this horse’s diet given that she has digestive issues. I was in communication with BO and BM over this, and both of them were on my side and appalled that it happened to begin with (they aren’t exactly fans of the way this lady behaves/treats people and there’s a long history of her doing other similar things).
I know it probably sounds as though it’s something that could have been a barn owner tells her to knock it off situation, but this woman is a bully, and being told to knock it off by the barn owner during her other forays into telling me how to manage my own horse had zero effect. She also didn’t listen when the barn manager told her to use the feed I requested. Ultimately I weighed it out and my feeling - and the feeling of the other boarder whose similar situation escalated to the point that this barn hand was letting children into her pony’s stall to pet him when she wasn’t even on the property and randomly putting up signs saying not to give him hay at night - was that if I wasn’t VERY explicit and firm in standing up for myself and my horse she’d get the impression she could get away with doing something that huge, which would open the door to other things such as tampering with my horse’s medication schedule. I know it sounds like a stretch, but if you met this particular barn hand and saw how egregiously she oversteps boundaries at every turn, it was a very real threat.
Re: not engaging, though, that’s the plan. We rarely cross paths as it is and I want nothing in the world more than for her to just give me and my mare a wide berth.
ETA: Just finished the video and loved it, thank you for the link!
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