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It is one thing to give a critique..... it is another to rudely trash a horse when the owner didn't ask for it.
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So if the critique is positive, it's perfectly ok, but if a negative is mentioned, it's called "rudely trashing a horse"?

I'm sorry, but I don't agree here. There is no other way to learn if all is not balanced. You can't learn by only looking at the successful or good ones; the negative aspects of horses' conformation are better learning tools, since people remember the negative more than the positive (as in, what NOT to do). Like I said earlier, if people don't want anyone "trashing" their horses, then don't put them in the public eye. If a person cannot be honest in their assessment of a horse, especially if it's their own, then someone criticizing their horse is the least of their worries.
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You can talk about the bad points and not be offensive. It's called "tact".

If you start out a critique with a positive, then people are more willing to accept the negative as well. You start out with negative and keep adding to the negative, then people WON'T learn because they are too busy defending the hurt they are feeling by the lack of tact in the critique.