It is a sad truth, that most people treat their horses like they would treat a baby or their child... in fact - like a human would be treated. But they forget, that this is not a human they care for - it is a horse and has completely different needs and requirements for living then a human has. And even more sad is that - eigther because of excessive sloth or just forgetfulness people often just don't realy seem to care for their horses.
This weekend there was a great derby where for the 50th anniversary for the local club hey had a class S dressage tournament - also a lower level tournaments for children. And the sad images one could see all around were horses treated like sports instruments and where obviously the treatmend of a trophy was more important then caring for their horses. One example is this cure horse, left standing on the paddock. Still wearing a headstall ( so it can be easier grabbed when needed again ) also still wearing horse gaiters and hoove protection for jumping.
The horse stood there for a long time, without someone caring for to removing those things off his body for comfort. And maybe the poor one stood there the whole rest of the day wearing "sport gear" al the time. It seems around here that people think that once a horse doesn't wear its headstall noone can fetch it from a paddock anymore. So everyone leaves those things attached all the time and then wonder why the horses shy on heads and have rubbed off places in their face. Or... in some rare and even more tragic events the poor horse tries to eat form under the fence and shies up from something, hanging itself in the headstall that is set too loose and break its neck or other things like that... and sadly I've seen more then one incident where that happened...
... enough ranting... It just is so frustrating to see people seem to not learn from mistakes and continue to act in a way "because it was always done like that"