Family friendly, no politics:

I can ride but with neither grace nor skill. I pasture these horses for a neighbor. He uses them for family and friends for weekend rides or week long camping or hunting trips in the mountains.

They are with me generally from May to November. The number staying with me varies from 2 to 8. After they finish off the yard grass and field alfalfa, they are moved to different pastures, until the vegetation recovers enough for another grazing session. My field and yard are separately fenced, with a connecting gate. Sometimes they are constrained to yard only, sometimes to field only. For some reason, they really enjoy the yard and if locked into the field will stand at the gate mournfully staring at me. In the spring, before the alfalfa is mature, two of them adequately mow the lawn in 5 or so days. Later in the year, it really dries up here, and I have to make use of the agricultural irrigation system. The horses' owner and his family help me move irrigation pipes around the field. The horses are locked in the yard, while the field is being irrigated. Irrigation depends on snow-melt from the mountains, so its availability is variable.

Thus, I have all these horses and mules to socialize with and spoil rotten, without the expense of horse ownership. The equines really seem to enjoy the situation for their part.

Mr Mule was with me every year since I began pasturing these horses. None of the other horses from those early years are still part of the herd. He's the only one who was ever a solo guest. Mr Mule was put down at the end of 2018, at the age of 35 years and with various medical problems. He fell in the yard once that summer and couldn't get back onto his feet without my help. We were afraid he would fall in the snow, not be able to get up and freeze to death.

This is horse country. The neighbors on two sides of my land each have full time herds of 4 horses. A 3rd side neighbor seasonally pastures his father's 2 horses. Stetson, Snake, and Chad belonged to the family who used to cut and bale my alfalfa. I knew them and the appaloosas from before I started pasturing horses. They lived in various pastures at the mouth of a canyon where I hike. Snake was put down and Chad sold off. Stetson is now the absolute dictator over Little Red and Twister (whose pictures I haven't posted yet).

The appaloosas belong to a bit more distant neighbor. They stay in other pastures near where Stetson & company graze. One year they were in adjacent pastures and conducted territorial battles over the fence.