Hold on, hear the mini-story first... I was interning at a fairly nasty barn once, one of those show stables where the trainer is the owner and the owner is all about the money.
So, naturally, I suppose they didn't care about me. I was working my butt off for free, every day. The previous stable I had gone to was professional, a place with an amazing, well-mannered, modest man and well-trained, well-cared for horses. The worst I had dealt with was a pony that tried to bite my boot or a QH that sniffed in my pockets. The horses there were so well-mannered that I could stuff them with treats and they wouldn't bite or get nasty about it. So, when the owner of the nasty stable told me not to FEED three horses in particular, a pony and two horses, I said OK. Feed. I went into those horses' stalls one day to pick out their feet, because I had learned that the owner's horses only had their feet cleaned once every five weeks when trimmed. I handled the pony well. I remembered how horses toss heads when demanding respect, so when the pony tried ear-pinning and looking mean at me, I flicked my hands in the air at him and moved him around a little bit. In a few minutes I was petting him and cleaning his packed feet out. I then went to the biggest horse's stall.
HUGE mistake. Now mind you, there's no signs, no locks, nothing special to see. Just a dirty horse in a dirty stall like all the other school horses. He was in plain sight, not hidden away or anything secret. I went in, and he pinned at me and gave a nasty look. He kept trying to get in my space, so I would flick my hands at him and he'd keep the distance. I tried to edge around him in the stall like I had with the pony to get to a spot where I could pet him and clean out his hooves. Somehow, I even ended up with my back in the corner of the stall because he was so big, and he still didn't try anything extreme. I figured, this isn't good, he doesn't want me in here and I better get out. He wasn't calming down. The gate was in such a way that I'd have to turn my back on him to get to it, and I didn't want to do that, so I went full-circle around him. Once out of the corner, he stayed where he was and didn't try moving into my space again. I put my hand out to let him know I was moving into his other blind spot, his rear. I remember my fingertips just grazing the side of his butt, looking at my hand as the skin SEIZURED, he whirled around eyes blazing teeth out, my eyesight went out for a second in shock as he grabbed my arm with his teeth and then THREW me at the stall wall. He didn't quite get the momentum to slam me, because he only had the skin of my arm, not a good hold, and I slipped out of his mouth in the air to spin around mid-air and land on my stomach. I looked over and saw him pressed close to the opposite wall, wringing his tail and pinning his ears. I picked up the hoof pick and limped out in time to hear the owner, just a few feet away and having KNOWN I went into that stall for a good two-five minutes, hollered, "Oh, hey, be careful, he'll throw you."
There were two trainers, and the one who didn't give me the internship papers said, about the one who DID and told me to have free will with the horses, "She said she didn't want you in any of the stalls."
The big humbling part was the long limp home over 25 acres and 4 pasture gates with a badly broken arm and a paralyzed left side. They knew I was hurt and didn't offer a ride home or even to check up on me later. I was covered in poo, by the way, so the snob riders who already hated me because I didn't have a horse at the moment and bothered with dirty horses, got a good laugh seeing me limp home in such a way.