Encountered a problem in Maya

Yesterday afternoon I spent an hour doing careful animation to my character, trying to get the subtle movements perfect as he pushes a door open and leans around. Everything was going perfectly well when suddenly, this happened:

The previous hour of work had been completely overrun by shapes like this, and there was no recovering them.

After looking online, I found that the problem was that I was editing the joints of the rig as well as the curves by mistake, something which makes this particular rig break completely. After this happened, I decided to keep two basic rules in mind whilst I animate:

• Only show the curves and polygons in the view finder
• Always save the file as I go along