Stupidest thing you've seen a horse person do?

Wow. Just wow. Some People treat horses like objects that you can use whips, and huge spurs, and torturous bits and methods to controll. Where were the owners? where were this kids parents? After injuring a horse like that she was aloud to ride the next day? I feel very badly for her mare. I don't own my own horse, but my grandfather used to own many, and taught me to ride, and to treat a horse with respect and kindness and you will get the same from it. I still trail ride just for fun, there is something really great about spending time with such great animals and just enjoying a trail. I've seen people give handfuls and handfulsand handfuls of sugar cubes to horses and wonder why they have an overweight horse with a bad sweet tooth, and then use a grazing muzle so they wouldn't eat as much. Umm a horse stumble(almost fell but he caught himself) and the rider tightened the reins so hard and fast(like with all the power just jerked back) and shouted quite loudly and then scolded the horse for freaking out and backing into another rider, by yelling at it and whipping it a few times. I love horses and I hope to get my own sometime.

I saw this girl who was riding her nice mare around the arena once. I went to watch and I was thinking "oh wow! Those two are great, good rider and talented horse", but quickly changed my mind when I saw what she was doing. She was "collecting" her horse by sea sawing on her mouth pretty aggressively (the horse was in a pelham with a drop noseband that was too tight), spurring her on and slamming down on her back. The horse was foaming and super heavy on the forehand with a hollowed out back, not happy at all and way behind the vertical. She proceeded to complain about how her horse was hard mouthed and was trying to rip her arms out so she got super frustrated and smacked the crop on her shoulder startling the horse and almost causing her to rear, and yanking her in a very tight circle. Nobody had any idea what she was doing other then confusing and scaring her mare. I thought she was doing a one rein stop, but when the horse stopes moving but kept her neck bent, instead of releasing the pressure, she KICKED, I repeat, kicked her horse directly with her spurs. And this wasn't a tap, this was a good old western both legs off the horse slam. And to make it worse, her horse started running backwards and threatened to rear (I don't blame her) the rider grabbed onto the bit and continued to yank on her mouth. After this started to happen, her mom went to the point of yelling at her (firmly but responsibly) to tone it down and that she was being unfair to her horse. She actually went up and grabbed the reins from the rider but the girl just turn her horse away almost knocking down her mom. A bunch of other riders in the arena left until she was done because it was a horrible thing to see. She even made her horses butt slam into more then one other horse because she wasn't paying attention and her horse backed up so fast. It really was not fun to see..

Geez thankfully I've never seen anything so bad. Probably the worst thing I've seen was at Nationals 2 years ago where this woman came into the ring whipping the crap out of her horse, less than a minute of being in the ring she was told to get out. I later heard her on the phone saying the judges were stupid and that her horse was stupid and wasted her money, basically acting like she did nothing wrong.

The worst thing I heard was from a friend who owns and shows Tennessee Walking Horses. She said they had a new girl at her barn and were hosting a local open gaited show. That morning she walked by the girls stall and saw her strapping blocks rather harshly onto the horses legs. When asked what she was doing she said "I'm trying to make his legs sore so he walks higher!" That girl didn't last long at that barn.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. This question is like... Everyone.

I watched this one girl not even fall off her horse, but the horse gave a little rear and she jumped off that horse so fast I didn't even know what was happening until the poor mare almost flipped over when the girl PUNCHED it in the neck and scared the crap out of the horse.

I've seen a girl 'ride' around a jumper course on this expensive made horse, but she was yanking him around every corner so hard that he decided to stop out on some jumps. She just kept see-sawing and yanking that she almost fell off and was asked to leave the arena. So she came into the warm-up arena and started spurring him, and PULLING at the same time. My trainer was like 'LET GO OF HIS MOUTH'. Hahaha. It was a really sad moment because she went and sold this expensive horse, only to go through I think two more and now has another horse. All this within a year. No trainer, nothing. Only money and a mind set on showing. ):

I was showing at a hunter show and was waiting for my next round when the previous rider came out after a pretty good round, save for ONE knocked rail. Loud enough and very serious she said 'he's going to get it when we get home. I just want to beat him with a stick right now, I can't believe he did that'. I can't stand it when riders blame their horse for a mistake they obviously made....

I also hate it, as you said, when little preps think they know how to train a horse and almost get someone injured. My horse is a very particular loader (into a trailer) and I was working with him on loading in a trailer with patience, no other tools but myself, ect. We hired these people to trailer for us and they wouldn't let me load him, so of course he tried to test them. Instead of taking it slow (which would have made it last only about 10 minutes), the lady started yanking down on his rope. He reared up and spun and nearly trampled her, so she got super angry and started yelling and trying to force him into the trailer... He ran her over and sent her to the hospital. 0__0

I had my grandparents friend (who is supposed to be a horse trainer) check out a Horse i was working with. She was a 2 1/2 year old fresh out of the field never been touched. I had been working with her for about a month and had her halter trained and was well onto gaining her trust. i had her set up in the round pen (she had been in the barn and her field was full so i set her up in the round pen for the night with some hay and water). It was after supper and i went out to groom her, you know just some extra bonding time. She ground ties so i had the lead rope on the ground and was grooming away when my grandparents friend proceeded to enter the round pen grab my mares lead rope and start yanking her around saying i should have already been on her back. She was a very (i cannot express how much) skittish mare. I was the only one who could do anything with her, so as you can imagine she's terrified. There was a crop hanging up from my cousin when she was riding in there so i grabbed it and smacked him in the back of the head with it. he dropped my mares lead rope then turned around and gave me a big huge lecture about how i'm doing a terrible job because i'm taking my time and earning her trust. on the way out of the round pen she was standing by the gate so he smacked her bum...she kicked him.

When i was taking lessons a few years back my instructor was explaining that one of the horses was very abused and had terrible trust issues and not 2 minutes later the horse she was talking about leaned out of its stall to sniff another horse and she hit him in the face with all her might and i quit lessons right then and there.

Wow. I haven't really seen abuse or something this stupid. Once, however, a lady cut herself while using the razor to open hay bales, and the barn owner proceeded to stich her up right there. That, to me, was pretty stupid of a horse-person.

This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wfq38NaGDU